The personal computer market will likely experience modest growth in 2013 as shipments rise, propped up by the ongoing demand for notebooks by price-conscious consumers.

Sudev Bangah, country director from the International Data Corporation (IDC) , said that the penetration rate of the personal computer in Indonesia was only at 9 percent.

“This is very low,” he said.

However, IDC predicts that information and communication technology (ICT) spending in Indonesia will hit US$15.8 billion in 2013, 5.3 percent more that 2012 year-end estimates.

A third of IT spending in 2012 flowed from the general public —which drove a 30 percent growth in the shipment of client devices, including PCs and mobile phones, toward the end of 2012.

Sandy Lumy, the president director of Lenovo Indonesia, affirmed that the biggest market for PC vendors was indeed the general public, which contributed up to 70 percent of unit sales, with the remaining divided equally between corporations and small-medium enterprises (SMEs).

“However, revenue-wise, contributions from the general public match that from the corporations — as the products purchased were at a lower price,” he said.

He added that the IdeaPad product line, priced between Rp 2.5 million (US$259.07) and Rp 4 million, was the best retail seller.

He added further that 85 percent of units sold to the general public were notebooks. Notebooks purchases were dominated by students aged between 15 and 24 years old and first-time PC buyers desiring mobility, he said.

Desktops were popular among corporations, with roughly 65 percent of units sold being desktops.

Lenovo Indonesia, he added, would continue “attacking” the market by introducing new products.

“The low PC penetration will present us with tremendous room for growth in the coming years. Moreover, the economic growth of above 6 percent has motivated the middle-class, which has the power to purchase technological goods,” he said.

Lenovo saw business grow by 18.7 percent between the third quarter of 2011 and 2012. The industry is feeling the impact of the West’s financial crisis and recorded growth of only by 5.6 percent.

Darwin Lie, an analyst at IDC, said that estimates record PC shipments in 2012 hitting 5.3 million, with 3.6 million being notebook computers.

He said tablet shipments would increase by 42 percent to 2 million in 2013. Local vendors, he noted, have come to dominate the market.

Yet, unlike tablets, the convertible personal computers would not take a sizable portion of the PC market at the time being given that the devices carried prices above Rp 6 million, making the devices unaffordable for the majority of customers.

Santhosh Viswanathan, the country manager of Intel Indonesia said that convertibles would be part of the market’s “device explosion”.

Intel supplies the chips that power the big brand’s Windows 8 convertibles. These devices are essentially portable computers that are, in addition to the traditional keyboard, equipped with touch screens.

“People want a combination device as long as the device allows great experience,” he said.

He added that the convertible trend was expected to seep into the enterprise world as well, given that the devices could be also be used as a tablet.

“The most important point will be how to integrate the devices with the existing IT system, in addition to keeping the devices manageable,” he said.

He added that PCs would increasingly become a necessity in education and entrepreneurship.

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