The PC market in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) took a number of punches last year, be it from the uncertain global economy or from media tablets that competed for consumer attention.

The same PC market grew 11% in 2011 to reach 119 million units despite challenges from disk drives, media tablets, and the global economy, IDC preliminary results showed.

While weaker than previous years, the growth remained healthy, especially considering the weak global economic cues that persisted throughout the year, highlighting the resilience in these Asian markets. In 4Q 2011 specifically, the market came in 3% ahead of IDC's initial forecasts with 11% year-on-year growth, as markets like China and Indonesia were partially insulated from the hard disk drive shortages that IDC had initially feared would hurt shipments.

Bryan Ma, Associate Vice President of Asia/Pacific Client Devices Research at IDC, said "PCs will still face disk drive supply challenges in the early part of 2012, but IDC also expects the market to rebound quickly by the second half of the year to remain close to 10% growth for the year in the Asia-Pacific region."

Lenovo continued to lead the region for full year 2011 by not just holding strong in its home market China, but also posting robust growth in the rest of the region. Confusion surrounding the future of HP's PC business hurt the vendor in the second half of the year, undoing the gains it had made earlier. ASUS made strong efforts in the ASEAN region last year, while Dell continued to fortify its positions in China and India.

Top semi-conductor customer

"The major growth drivers in 2011 were smartphones, media tablets and solid-state drives (SSDs)," said Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Those companies that gained share in the smartphone market, such as Apple, Samsung Electronics and HTC, increased their semiconductor demand, while those who lost market share in this segment, such as Nokia and LG Electronics, decreased their semiconductor demand. Media tablets were also a growth driver for the semiconductor market throughout 2011."