SE Asia’s laptop, tablet markets hit $4.7B in 9 mos

MANILA, Philippines - GfK, one of the world’s largest research companies, reported that the laptop and tablet markets in Southeast Asia including the Philippines expanded by 12 percent in terms of value and by 26 percent in terms of volume in the first nine months of the year.

From January to September, GfK said consumers in Southeast Asia spent $4.72 billion on nearly 8.8 million tablets and laptops as convenience, portability, and connectivity take center stage in today’s fast pace society where mobile Internet devices continue to see surge in demand and experience exponential growth.

Gerard Tan, account director for digital technology at GfK Asia, said its retail audit findings across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia showed a combined laptop and tablet markets growth of between five percent and 22 percent while volume grew between 10 percent and 37 percent in each and every country.

“Southeast Asia’s laptop and tablet markets will continue to remain buoyant in the coming months with the region’s major developing markets being the growth engines. Our findings show that Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are the three biggest markets for such gadgets and collectively consume over 70 percent of the region’s sales volume while contributing 67 percent to the overall dollar value,” Tan stressed.

Consumption of laptops and tablets in the largest market, Indonesia, reached 2.76 million units—an increase of 37 percent over the last year and collecting revenue totaling nearly $1.24 billion followed by Malaysia as consumers spent nearly $1.1 billion on two million.

Tan pointed out that tablets on the Android operating system (OS) have been dominating the market in both of these countries, with over seven in every ten sold or 72 percent being an Android tablet.

GfK insights in particular revealed the two increasingly popularity form factors which are rapidly being adopted across the region—tablets and ultrathin laptops.

Sales volume of ultrathin laptops, defined as those which are two centimeters or less in thickness, grew 259 percent over last year while tablet sales more than doubled.

To date, tablets make up a third or 33 percent of the total sales value of the overall market compared to only 19 percent a year ago.

According to him, sales of tablets and laptops have concurrently surged across Southeast Asia.

“As economies in the developing markets continue to advance in sophistication and network service providers further expand their coverage to avail easy access to the Internet, we can surely expect the market and performance of tablets to keep on trending upwards,” he said.

GfK is constantly innovating and using the latest technologies and the smartest methodologies to give its clients the clearest understanding of the most important people in the world.