Thin clients enjoy surge in APEJ: IDC

By Enterprise Innovation Editors | Nov 4, 2009

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As a cost-saving measure during the recent financial crisis, companies are increasingly looking into the technology of desktop virtualization [7] to optimize their operations, prompting the surge of thin client purchases in the Asia Pacific excluding Japan region, a report from IDC suggested.

According to the latest IDC Asia/Pacific Quarterly Thin Client [8] Tracker report, the thin client market in the region totaled 419,000 units in 1H09, representing an increase of 15.5% over 1H08.

“Despite the global financial crisis impact on CAPEX, the financial services segment pulled ahead of the other verticals in terms of thin client deployments, capturing almost half of all thin client sales in 1H09, as banks in China procured strongly from both domestic and multinational thin client suppliers in 2Q. Public segment fulfillments, driven largely by education sector, grew 47.0% over 2H08, and was the second largest segment in 1H09, with 23.3% of all thin client volume in APEJ,” said Reuben Tan, Senior Manager of IDC Asia/Pacific’s Personal Systems Group. “IDC believes that spurred by continuous developments and improvements in desktop virtualization applications, thin clients are also now able to gain a foothold in a significantly broader range of markets compared to the past. IT managers are increasingly starting to acknowledge that the long-term cost savings associated with a virtual desktop are maximized when the access point is converted into a thin client type device.”

Vendor Rankings
The Top 6 vendors in APEJ in 1H09 were Centerm, HP, HCL, Start, nComputing and Greatwall. The ranking in APEJ changed slightly over 2H08, where nComputing’s surge in the education sector in various markets resulted in the vendor leapfrogging ahead of Wyse. The Top 6 vendors together captured around 74.7% of the overall thin client sales in the APEJ region in 1H09, a notable increase from 70.3% in 2H08.

Country Outlook
According to IDC's latest 5-year forecast, India is expected to post the highest compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the next 5 years (33.7%), followed by China (30.1%). The matured markets of Australia and New Zealand are still showing strong positive growth in absolute terms but are expected to post relatively lower CAGRs of 14.6% and 13.6% respectively. Other markets such as Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan are also expected to see increase in demand, fuelled by a whole new range of applications and new vertical deployments.