Telco Sector Still Performing Well in Asian Technology Markets

Total Year-to-Date (YTD) 2010 market panels have once more, exhibited a positive growth across all panels in value, units and average selling price, according to the latest GfK Market Insight report for Asia.

GDP Year-on-Year growth has been relatively stable in the first quarter of 2010 across all countries in Asia when compared against the last quarter in 2009.

February 2010 has witnessed a rise in the inflation rate in countries like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The unemployment rate remains unchanged in February 2010, (except for a slight dip in Hong Kong and Korea), which further strengthened the belief that these economies are well and truly on the road to recovery. No improvement was registered among the Asia Stock Indices between the January and February 2010.

Consumer Electronics

The overall YTD 2010 Consumer Electronics market has improved marginally in terms of both value and volume, in spite of an increase in its average selling price compared to the previous month.

LCD TV continued to show an even better growth, recording an increase of more than half for both value and unit growth, notwithstanding an even lower price erosion of less than 3%. The LCD TV is undoubtedly acquiring more popularity among consumers as its value share in all Asia countries rose for YTD2010 compared to YTD2009. Value growth in excess of 10% was enjoyed in the Philippines and Korea. In contrast, market share of CRT TV is experiencing a downward trend across all Asian countries.

Photo

In the Digital Camera market, all Asian countries continue to present positive value growth with the exception of Thailand. Taiwan has once more registered negative volume growth whilst high average price erosion continued in Philippines and Thailand and was also now evident in Indonesia and Singapore as well.

Telecommunication

Smartphones have once again triumphed in the telecommunication sector with double-digit share growth for the whole Asian region. This was largely thanks to the alluring price points of the phones; the very competitive data plan rates offered by the network operators in Malaysia and considerable price reductions in South Korea. These factors have made these two countries the leading Smartphone markets, both achieving market share growth of over 30%.

Information Technology

Although Mobile Computers have contributed significantly to the overall positive growth in the Information Technology sector, this segment did not perform much better than was recorded in the previous month. Also, in spite of the fact that the Hong Kong and Singaporean markets still saw market share in excess of 70% market share, it is worth noting that a slight decline of over 2% is found when comparing the YTD 2010 with the previous year.