Good or Bad : Tablet taking over the African PC Market - IDC Stats

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) PC market experienced a significant decline of 14.1 per cent year on year during the first quarter of 2013, according to preliminary results released weekend by International Data Corporation (IDC), the premier global market intelligence and advisory firm for the information technology and telecommunications markets.

The results says a total PC shipments in the MEA region slowed down to 5.3 million units, with desktops declining 18.4 per cent year on year to 2 million units, while notebook shipments declined 11.2 per cent year on year to total 3.3 million units.

Fouad Rafiq Charakla, research manager for PC, systems, and infrastructure solutions at IDC MEA and Turkey said: "With a growing portion of end users opting for tablets to meet their computing needs, the demand for PCs continues to suffer.

Looking at the more mature markets within the region, this trend is extremely visible within the power retail channel, where tablet sales have already exceeded portable PC sales in some power retail outlets.  - NCW