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Experts on Vietnam's PC market report big boom

Growing confidence * Dataquest consultants say PC sales in Vietnam climbed 20 percent last year to 177,266 units. * Professional use is a major contributing factor to the boom, particularly oil and gas industry buyers which bought 120,000 computers. * Vietnam has Southeast Asia's highest growth rate. * One Singapore-based analyst predicts the market to rise to 450,000 units yearly by 2010. * Last year, HP sold 3,556 Intel-based servers in the country.

Vietnam's personal computer market was Asia's second-fastest growing last year because rapid economic growth boosted demand from businesses, according to a market study.

Personal computer sales in Vietnam climbed a fifth last year to 177,266, according to Dataquest Inc, a unit of Connecticut-based information-technology consultant and researcher Gartner Inc. Only Thailand's growth of 40 percent was faster in Asia.

Vietnam's growth was largely caused by a 27 percent increase in shipments of computers for professional use. The country's 7 percent economic-growth rate, the fastest in Southeast Asia, is boosting companies' demand for personal computers, analysts said.

"Vietnam is getting fairly significant foreign direct investment," said Martin Gilliland, a Singapore-based senior industry analyst at Gartner.

"Linked with the government's attitude to educating people on computer use and on installing computers as fast as possible, you're seeing strong growth," he said.

Hewlett-Packard Co, including the newly purchased Compaq Computer Corp was the biggest overseas vendor of desktop PCs in Vietnam, selling 18,571 units. International Business Machines Corp was second at 11,509, followed by Acer Inc, Dell Computer Corp and Fujitsu Ltd.

The size of Vietnam's market for personal computers will probably increase to 450,000 unit a year by 2010, slightly less than the current size of Singapore's market, Gartner said.

"Our confidence in this market is growing," said Truong Phi Dung, IBM's senior sales manager in Vietnam.

"We still have our customer segment, which focuses on value-added besides just the hardware box," he said.

Sales of laptops for professional use rose by three-fifths.

IBM was the market leader for laptops, selling 5,153 units.

Hewlett-Packard was second at 1,880 units, followed by Acer and Toshiba Corp.

"That's a function of multinationals tending to use laptops and global budgets allowing laptops to be provided in a developing country like Vietnam," Gilliland said.

"The oil and gas industry in Vietnam is doing quite well, and they're a fairly significant customer in mobile PCs," he said.

Most desktop PCs in Vietnam are made locally by companies which either use their own brand name or no brand name at all, Gilliland said. These PCs accounted for 120,200 units last year, according to Gartner.

"The people who are gaining now are the non-branded local assemblers," said Ha Huy Hao, Vietnam country manager for Cisco Systems Inc, the largest maker of equipment to direct Internet traffic.

"The government is encouraging local assembly because the technology is simple and proven, and because prices are lower so more people can have more access to PCs," Ha said. Hewlett-Packard led the market for Intel-based servers at 3,556 units, followed by IBM at 1,437 units.
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