The demand for laptops and tablets in Southeast Asia surged 12 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively, in the first nine months of 2012.

According to GfK Asia, consumers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia spent a combined of more than US$4.72 billion on nearly 8.8 million tablets and laptops during the period.

Across six key markets in Southeast Asia, the overall worth of the combined laptop and tablet markets in each and every country expanded between five and 22 per cent with all markets managing to achieve robust double-digit volume growth of up to 37 per cent.

“Southeast Asia’s laptop and tablet markets will continue to remain buoyant in the coming months with the region’s major developing markets being the growth engines,” said Gerard Tan, account director for digital technology at GfK Asia.

Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are the three biggest markets for such gadgets and collectively account for more than 70 per cent of the region’s sales volume and 67 per cent of the dollar value.

Sales of laptops and tablets in the largest market, Indonesia, reached 2.76 million units – an increase of 37 per cent over the last year and collecting revenue totaling nearly US$1.24 billion.

Malaysia ranked second in both sales volume and value, with consumers spending nearly US$1.1 billion on 2 million devices.

Tablets on the Android operating system (OS) have been dominating the market in both of these countries, accounting for 72 per cent of sales.

Sales of ultrathin laptops, defined as those which are 2cm or less in thickness, grew 259 per cent over last year while tablet sales more than doubled. To date, tablets make up a third (33 per cent) of the total sales value of the overall market, compared to only 19 per cent a year ago.

“As economies in the developing markets continue to advance in sophistication and network service providers further expand their coverage to avail easy access to the Internet, we can surely expect the market and performance of tablets to keep on trending upwards,” Tan concluded.

GB