The Public Sector will continue to drive growth in the traditional PC market for 2018, particularly in India and the Philippines where large tenders will be held. Ongoing migration to Windows 10 by enterprises in the Financial, Manufacturing and Resources verticals will also help to support the commercial market in the region. Digital transformation efforts in the Distribution and Services, Manufacturing and Resources verticals will continue to fuel the growth in the tablet market.

“The education sector in APeJC remains one of the most robust verticals in the commercial space”, said Maciek Gornicki, Research Manager at IDC Asia/Pacific Client Devices. “As governments, particularly in emerging markets, embark on digital transformation, investment in IT infrastructure will continue. This means deployment of devices in the education sector across the region will continue in the coming years as well.”

“With Governments and more businesses embracing digital transformation, the tablet becomes a popular choice to help achieve enterprise mobility,” said Peggy Cheung, Research Manager at IDC Asia/Pacific Client Devices. “Small- and medium-sized businesses who have budget concerns will drive steady growth in commercial demand, with tablets offering a good balance of mobility and price.”

The commercial traditional PC market posted 5% increase in 2017, boosted by several big education projects completed across the region. YoY, education shipments grew 33% in total. ELCOT alone contributed to 550,000 units in India last year, while the market was further supported by smaller education tenders, bringing the overall growth in the education sector to 108%.

The Indonesia education market posted 157% increase in 2017, as the market benefited from the rollout of the Computer Based National Exam initiative, among other projects. Australia and New Zealand, traditionally robust education markets, saw further expansion of Chromebook devices. Chrome is now the largest-used OS in the education sector in New Zealand and the second largest in Australia, in terms of shipments in 2017.

Aside from education, shipments for Singapore’s Government sector grew, boosted by demand following GovTech Singapore’s Internet Separation campaign. The campaign mandates Government agency employees to be equipped with a secondary device for Internet access.

The commercial tablet market continued to grow and recorded 18% YoY growth in 2017, driven by the Public Sector in India and Malaysia. The Digital India initiative by the Government of India continued to encourage more departments to deploy tablets in order to digitalize their processes and improve operational efficiency. The Governments of India and Malaysia were also eager to push e-learning by providing students and teachers with either subsidized or free tablets, leading to large-scale tablet distributions in 2017.

Distribution and Services sector was the second largest vertical. With vendors pushing tablets to the commercial market, businesses are getting more familiar with the mobility benefits of using tablets, resulting in stable demand. Point-of-sale (POS) systems in retail stores, self-ordering in restaurants, and mobility devices for sales representatives are popular use cases in the region.