“The PC market increased last year and if we look at laptops they did better. Desktop [sales] are in decline, which is why the market did not grow that much,” said Ciprian Donciu, sales&marketing manager with Asus Romania.
“More and more people are choosing either a laptop or a tablet. Those who are still buying desktop PCs are either going for a ‘heavy gaming’ or a very low priced configuration.”
The average laptop price on the Romanian market is about 1,500 lei (EUR342) give or take RON100, while a desktop PC without a monitor starts from RON900 and a desktop PC with a monitor included starts from RON1,200. A gaming desktop may cost RON5,000 to RON10,000 if it is an Alienware system.
Asus’ share of the laptop market last year was about 20%, and sales stood at 110,000 units. It was the second leading vendor after Acer, which sold 132,000 notebooks getting 24% of the market.
Donciu said the company had two quarters last year when its performance suffered somewhat because of the financial problems of its dealers in Romania but rebounded in the fourth quarter.
RHS Company and Scop Computers, two of the largest IT&C dealers, in Romania went insolvent on suspicion of fraud from the tax authorities.
The average price of portable computers sold in Romania fell by 4% last year and the trend will continue across all categories in 2013, which includes tablets, believes Bogdan Iftemie, sales manager of the local subsidiary of Acer, top laptop vendor in this country.
Data ZF got from several market sources show Acer, Asus, HP and Lenovo sold most laptops in Romania in 2012. Apple did not make it into the top ten by number of units sold. Tenth largest vendor was Romanian PC maker Maguay. The market is estimated to have grown by more than 10% to 540,000 units.
Asus also sold almost 30,000 tablets, on a market the company believes amounted to 150,000 units.
“The tablet market may reach 200,000 units this year, and we plan to double sales of tablets from 30,000 to 60,000,” Donciu said.
Besides tablets and laptops, Asus also sold 2,000 units of its phone/tablet hybrid PadFone, and 500,000 other products such as PC parts (motherboards, graphics cards, sound cards, TV tuners), LCD monitors and wireless routers.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)