PHL laptop market expected to rebound this year, IDC says

By Miguel Hanz L. Antivola, Reporter

THE Philippine laptop market is forecast to grow to 1.69 million shipments this year, according to the International Data Corp. (IDC), a rebound from 2023’s drop that came amid a decrease in demand and a slowing global economy.

Data from IDC showed shipments are expected to go up from the 1.32-million forecast for last year. However, this is lower than the 1.87 million in 2022.

“Vendors were taken by surprise with the abrupt downturn in 2023, leading to inventory challenges in the first half and the subsequent management of setbacks in the second,” Roben Victor M. Dispo, associate research analyst for client devices at IDC Philippines, said in an e-mail interview with ����ý.

“Same with the global economic growth, anticipate a market rebound by 2024 following adjustments made in response to the challenges of 2023,” he added. “Although vendors maintain a cautious outlook.”

Philippine laptop shipments for 2023 were forecast to post a year-on-year decline of at least 28% due to the shift to face-to-face setups, according to Mr. Dispo.

“When the pandemic started, it was the opportunity for laptop sales [to increase] as it was paralleled with [work from home] setups, online classes, and online leisure due to the restrictions,” he said.

“For 2023, it was the plummet of those momentum of sales, coupled with the overall economic downturn,” he added.

From the fourth quarter of 2022 to the third quarter of 2023, Acer Group was the leading laptop brand with a 30.56% market share, according to IDC.

This was followed by Lenovo (21.56%), ASUS (15.61%), HP, Inc. (14.44%), and Dell Technologies (6.6%).

Mr. Dispo said Filipino consumers can expect processors such as Intel’s Meteor Lake and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite to boost the battery life of Windows machines this year to compete with Apple’s MacBooks.

Valuable use cases for artificial intelligence in personal computers would not emerge until 2025, he added.