Consumers across six key markets in Southeast Asia spent over USD4.72 billion on nearly 8.8 million tablets and laptops, reflecting a substantial growth of 12 percent in value and 26 percent in volume compared to the same period last year.
According to latest GfK Asia retail audit findings across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, the overall worth of the combined laptop and tablet markets in each and every country expanded between 5 to 22 percent with all markets managing to achieve robust double-digit volume growth of up to 37 percent.
Gerard Tan, account director for digital technology at GfK Asia said 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.
Among its findings is 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.
Laptops and tablets sales in Indonesia, reached 2.76 million units, 37 percent up from last year’s sales, collecting revenue totaling nearly USD1.24 billion. Malaysia ranked second in both sales volume and value, thanks to consumers there spending nearly USD1.1 billion on two million of these devices.
GfK Asia said it is worth noting 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 (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 ultra thin laptops. Sales volume of ultra thin laptops, defined as those which are 2 centimeters or less in thickness, grew 259 percent over last year while tablet sales more than doubled. To date, tablets make up a third (33 percent) of the total sales value of the overall market, compared to only 19 percent a year ago.