"Strong domestic demand and exports enabled China's economy to grow in a steady and healthy pattern last year, aiding PC growth," said Annie Chung, a hardware analyst with Gartner's Asia-Pacific operation.

PC shipments to China reached 9.29 million units last year, representing 8.7 per cent year-on-year growth and accounting for about 43 per cent of the Asia-Pacific total.

Chung said the educational sector was a bright spot in last year's market with a 27 per cent increase year-on-year.

She pointed out replacing or installing computing equipment at schools and campuses in 2002 significantly boosted the education sector of the overall PC market.

It contributed about 15 per cent of overall shipments, compared with only 12 per cent in the previous year.

At the same time, sales of notebooks reached a new high with annual growth of almost 40 per cent . This was despite the loss of large local vendors - Great Wall, Langchao and Hisense - dropping out of the notebook business due to difficulties in gaining market share.

Another major change in the Chinese PC market last year was that most of the multinational PC vendors performed well compared with local vendors in terms of growth rate.

Dell Computer squeezed successfully into the low-end consumer market - a major factor for its performance as the only PC vendor with double-digit growth in Asia-Pacific.

Mirroring the Chinese market, the growth of Asia-Pacific's PC market also outpaced the worldwide industry last year, according to Lilian Tay, senior analyst of Gartner Asia-Pacific group.

PC shipments in the region reached 21.7 million units last year, an 8.6 per cent increase on 2001 while the worldwide PC market grew 3 per cent in 2002.

"The growth rate of the Asia-Pacific market was a significant contributor to the worldwide industry returning to positive growth in 2002," Tay said.

"Much of the growth came from the domestic and the small and medium enterprise market, as well as demand for mobile PCs."

Well-known Chinese brand Legend maintained its leading position as the No 1 PC vendor in the region, followed by Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

A recent Gartner end-user study showed businesses in Asia-Pacific are keeping their PCs for at least four to five years, which indicates 2003 could be the year of replacement based on large pre-Y2K installments.

(China Daily February 14, 2003)