Taiwanese PC maker Asus is witnessing a surge in tender opportunities in the South African market during the COVID-19 lockdown.
So says Werner Joubert, sales director at Asus in SA, in an e-mail interview with ITWeb after the company today unveiled its gaming laptop – the dual-screen ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 – to the South African market.
Since the COVID-19 lockdown was enforced to stop the spreading of the deadly virus, many South Africans have taken to working and learning from home.
“We are seeing plenty of tender opportunities coming up now as a result of working from home, with educational institutions, as well as companies and individuals, purchasing devices for their own use,” Joubert says.
According to Statista, in the second quarter of 2020, Asus had a market share of 5.5% of global PC unit shipments, up from 5% in the previous quarter.
It notes Asus is in the second tier of PC vendors, together with Apple and Acer, which each have had a market share of 6% to 8% over the past few years.
Joubert says Asus has seen large-scale growth during the lockdown period, with the market increasing from January to date.
Nonetheless, he says in April, during hard lockdown, there was a dip in business. “However, this was quickly rectified during May and June. One issue we are seeing that will happen is a shortage of products due to the quick increase in demand.”
According to market analyst firm Gartner, worldwide PC shipments totalled 64.8 million units in the second quarter of 2020, a 2.8% increase from the second quarter of 2019.
It says after a significant decline in the first quarter of the year due to COVID-19-related supply chain disruptions, the PC market returned to growth as vendors restocked their channels and mobile PC demand increased.
In SA, Joubert says, Asus has seen notebook shipments on the increase year-on-year, roughly 12% to date.
“There was a decline during 2019 from the previous year in the consumer space. However, towards the end of 2019, this started to increase again. On desktop, we saw a small decline this year of roughly 2%; however, so far we expect it to be stable.”
Asus has introduced the ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 laptop to target the gaming market in the country.
It describes the computing device as an ultra-slim gaming laptop which features an integrated secondary 14.1-inch full-width touchscreen for accelerated multi-tasking, gaming and content creation.
“In South Africa, the gaming notebook market is around 2.5% of the total notebook market. This is increasing year-on-year and we see a bigger demand coming for these high-performance devices.
“Compared to other regions, South Africa is very small, but with a good growth rate. The gaming market has not yet exploded in such a way that can be seen across Europe and Asia, as an example.”
To grow the local business, Joubert says: “We always ensure to have the latest product on time so we can launch first and with the rest of the world. Our new products and design features are aimed at Generation Z, as we know these are the customers of tomorrow.”
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