“My estimate is the PC market will reach 700,000 units in 2011, a 15% increase,” Tiberiu Dobre, manager of HP’s Personal System Group division, told ZF in an interview.
HP, one of the largest companies on the local IT market, will focus on all market segments, but that growth will most likely not come from retail, Dobre said.
“We have seen good results in retail so far, yet this year’s growth will not come from here, but largely from the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), public institutions and large corporations.”
Dobre says there has already been growth on this segment, and that he is expecting it to increase further in the second half of the year. “Whereas in retail we can expect a stagnation or a 5% rise, the difference up to 15% will come from large corporations and public institutions.”
This trend is normal after the severe decline recorded in previous years. “On the public segment and on the corporate segment there were very steep declines, in fact the market plunged in 2009 against 2008, by 80% to 90%, as marketing and acquisition budgets were cut,” Dobre said.
However, “we have been through a crisis, businesses have been remodeled, have adjusted to the new conditions and now IT investment budgets are starting to return,” he added.
On the other hand, projects are no longer the size of those in 2008, when 1.1 million computers were sold. “Then we were happy when we had a 10,000-unit project, now we are happy for 700-800 PCs.”
As for HP’s market share, Dobre said the US company became no. 1 on the market in the first quarter of 2010, and was “probably” no. 2 in the full year. “When the market grew 14% (in the first quarter of this year i.e.) against the similar period of last year, we grew over 60%,” said Dobre, adding HP’s plans for the full year are set: “The market will grow 15%, we will grow 40%.”