While PC shipments in the vast majority of the world are struggling to grow, the Asia-Pacific region is showing tremendous demand. According to the latest data from IDC, the PC market in the region has increased by 8%, a massive improvement over last quarter. Analysts credit this success to Windows XP’s demise, which lead many people to upgrade their PCs to Windows 8.1 with Bing 0- which lead OEMs to ship cheaper devices, for the positive outcome.
Among the Asian countries, Indians have shown the most interest in the new PCs. Just a few months ago, India witnessed the biggest elections of all time, where over 800 million people were eligible to vote; the sentiment after the elections have fostered the growth of sales, while in China, vendors have continued to ship the devices in spite of a poor sell-out. Overall, there were almost 26.6 million PC units sold in Q3 of 2014 from the APEC regions.
Microsoft pulled the plug on its massively popular Windows XP operating system earlier this year. The decade old operating system is still used by a large chunk of people. Analysts believe that many such people have finally upgraded their computer, which led to increase in the PC shipments.
“XP migration helped boost commercial PC spending earlier this year,” says Handoko Andi, Research Manager for Client Devices Research at IDC Asia/Pacific. “But in recent quarters, we have seen Microsoft add a lot to the entry-level segment by launching the Windows 8.1 with Bing program. This program has helped consumers buy licensed OS PC in many countries in the region.”
The other reason is likely to be the release of Windows 8.1 with Bing. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced Windows 8.1 with Bing, a modified version of Windows 8.1 operating system that it made available to the OEMs for free of charge. This led the OEMs to release devices much cheaper price ranges, resulting in wider adoption. The only noticeable change that differentiates Windows 8.1 with Bing from its regular counterpart is that it sets Bing instead of Google as the default search engine in Internet Explorer.
Among computer manufacturers, Lenovo has maintained the top spot for the most computer-selling vendor, seeing a 24.6% increase since last quarter and 5.8% growth year-on-year. Right below the Lenovo sits Dell, which saw an 11.1% percent growth since last month and a 6.2% surge in the amount of sales year-on-year. Despite a massive 16.1% year-on-year drop, HP showed 10.1% growth this quarter and took the third position. These three vendors were followed by Acer and ASUS.
