A pitched PC battle is set to break out next year in Australia as Lenovo expands their consumer business while Hewlett Packard, Toshiba and Dell struggle to hold onto market share.
The big winners apart from Lenovo could be Acer and Asus, both Taiwanese Companies who are currently rolling out new notebooks, all in one PC’s and a new generation of Chromebooks and Tablets.
Asustek (ASUS) expects to ship 20.1 million notebooks (including notebook/tablet hybrid models) in 2014, increasing 6.9% on year, and aims to see 2015 shipments grow over 5% on year to attain the third-largest global market share, the company said at the weekend.
In Australia ASUS is set to enter the Smartphone market via major retail stores, a plan by Acer to enter the smartphone market has been put on hold.
Asustek expects to ship eight million ZenFone series smartphones in 2014 and aims to ship 16 million units in 2015.
Asustek expects to ship 9.4 million units in 2014 and aims at 20% sequential growth in 2015.
In the third quarter Asustek had revenues of US$3.75 billion, 57% came from notebooks, 13% from motherboards and graphics cards, 10% from smartphones, 8% from tablets and 12% from other product lines, Asustek indicated.
Recently Toshiba pulled out of 19 of 32 global consumer markets as the Company struggles to deliver profitability from their PC division.
Insiders have told ChannelNews that Australia has to improve their current position next year or they could face the same fate as other subsidiaries that have pulled out of the consumer PC market.
Also under pressure is Hewlett-Packard, the $66bn technology giant who has been fined millions by an Australian Federal Court for misleading Australians over warranty claims is operating in crisis mode, has opted to break up its unwieldy PC business.
Recently Brendan Lau the former head of HP’s PC Division quit HP to take up a senior position at Lenovo.
The move comes as HP management in Australia and the USA is gripped by allegation and counter allegation of fraud and misrepresentation over the way that HP conducts their business around the world.
Recently HP CEO Meg Whitman decided to split the company’s personal computers and printers arm from its huge business making hardware for big corporate customers.
Insiders are tipping that Lenovo will strip market share away from HP next year both in the SMB and consumer PC markets.
