'PC market has a few good years left'
South Africa
,
29 Oct 2014
'PC market has a few good years left'
The desktop has a good few years left in the personal computer (PC) market space, says Mustek's managing director Hein Engelbrecht.
Mustek is a South African based assembler and distributor of PCs and complementary ICT products.
Engelbrecht told ITWeb Africa that while the global PC market is struggling to grow, there is room for growth specifically in the corporate environment.
And regarding maintenance, the desktop is still the cheaper option to maintain, he said.
"One thing I think will accelerate growth will come from Windows 10. This will shift a lot of focus to the desktop again.
"If you look at the number of PCs running on XP there is still quite a large number, and they still have to be upgraded at some stage," he said.
However, the desktop will probably not look the same way it has historically, he added.
Engelbrecht also said that Mustek plans to continue to grow its locally assembled computer brand Mecer in the South African market.
The company's full year financial results for the period ended June 2014 (FY14) showed that Mecer contributed 20% of the turnover despite the decline of global desktop computing sales.
"Mecer is still our bread and butter," he told ITWeb Africa.
"But I think we have positioned ourselves that should it be, we're not going to die with the desktop," he said.
Apart from offering its own branded products, Mustek has managed to diversify and expand its business and now distributes multinational PCs from vendors such as ASUS, Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba, said Engelbrecht.
Mustek also decided to become involved in the networking, cables and fibre space - all areas it was traditionally not involved in, he noted.
He told ITWeb Africa that Mustek plans for all its new initiatives to contribute 25% to growth of the business in five years.
After numerous quarters of struggle, there has been some hope for the global PC market.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Quarterly PC Tracker, the Middle East and Africa experienced a 2.1% increase in PC shipments in the third quarter of 2014.