The month of January 2012 saw over 69,000 pieces of laptops, desktop computers, monitors, and printers being sold in Vietnams B2B market. When looking at the total worth of PC and printing devices in corporate Vietnam, laptops and desktop computer made up 40 and 41 percent of the B2B pie respectively. In volume terms however, the two highest selling products were monitors and desktop computers, each accounting for 31 percent.

While laptops, which averaged at a price of USD 617 sold nearly 15,000 units to contribute the highest dollars, it was the monitor segment which excelled in quantity sales, noted Mr. Van Tran Khoa, General Manager of GfK Vietnam. Over 21.000 units averaging at USD112 were snapped up in total by businesses in a single month alone.

GfK Vietnam have been conducting retail audit tracking of technical consumer goods, including the IT sector, for nearly 15 years. The company recently also commenced tracking of B2B sales in the IT sector, covering corporate transactions.

Corporate sales performance for the month of January is actually expected to be comparatively lower due to the Lunar New Year holidays, said Mr. Van. The two weeks of business shutdown will definitely impact sales quite significantly. The bright side of things is that we can certainly expect to see higher sales in the months to come.

Based on GfK Vietnam predictions, demand in the B2B market for desktop computers and laptops are likely to see a significant spike in 2012. Sales of laptops in the B2B sector is estimated to have contributed around 15 percent in value towards the overall laptop sales in the country last year, and this figure is deemed to rise to 20 percent this year. A similar trend is also forecasted for the desktop computer segment where corporate sales should see a rise from its 40 percent share in 2011, to half of the total pie in 2012.

The high inflation experienced by the country for most part of 2011 had affected corporate spending across all sectors, taking into consideration also that a small percentage of small and medium sized private companies were closed due to tough economic conditions, commented Mr. Van. However, moving forward with the slew of counter measures implemented by the government, we can anticipate the Vietnam economy to improve, leading to business resumption and more budget release by companies for commercial activities and B2B sales, especially in the PC market, concluded Mr. Van.

Notes:

- GfK Vietnams tracking of B2B market/Corporate IT sales covers laptops, desktop PCs, monitors and printing devices.

- Survey period: January 2012