Portable tablets surge as PCs slide

Demand for electronic devices in China is quickly shifting from personal computers to more flexible and easy-to-carry tablets, according to industry research reported on Tuesday.

The quantity of PCs purchased by Chinese enterprises dropped 7 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2013 amid a slowing economy, according to IDC, a United States-based market consultancy. In the same period, however, demand for portable tablets surged by more than 45 percent year-on-year .

"Demand from a number of emerging sectors, including education, health care and electrical power, will fuel shipments of tablets," said Wang Lili, an IDC analyst. "A downturn in PCs is inevitable."

Wang attributed the downturn to sliding demand in manufacturing and government sectors.

Local governments were big spenders on computer hardware in China, but with the top leadership's emphasis on reduced spending, local governments are more reluctant to buy new desktop PCs, analysts said.

Education could be one of the few growth areas for PC manufacturers.

The State-sponsored initiative to update education infrastructure in smaller cities will help lift PC shipments at some point, Wang said.

Annual shipments of enterprise-use PCs will likely be down by 1.5 percent in 2014 compared to a year ago, the IDC said, predicting that sales growth will flatten from 2015 to 2018 to about 3.5 percent.

By contrast, the portable tablet market enjoys a much brighter sales forecast. Local governments are looking to add a significant number of the portable devices to improve efficiency, Wang said. Law enforcement agencies, statistics bureaus and tobacco administration departments are among the top tablet buyers, she added.

The latest large-scale government purchase of tablets happened last October when two Chinese tablet makers, Tongfang Co and Beijing Eren Eben Information Technology Co, won a bid to provide tablets for a nationwide economic census.

China surpassed the US as the world's largest PC market in 2011. But concerns over a slowing economy have hindered growth since then.

Some buyers decided to skip PCs in favor of the less expensive portable tablets.

Quarterly tablet shipments in China have been above 2 million over the previous year, similar to that of the desktop PCs, according to data from IDC and Gartner Inc., a worldwide IT research and advisory company.