HP says Asia PC shipments growing

A woman walks past the Hewlett Packard logo in a file photo. Top global personal computer maker Hewlett-Packard's PC shipments in Asia are growing at about twice the market growth rate, or about 36 percent a year, a senior executive said on Wednesday.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Top global personal computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co.'s (HPQ.N) PC shipments in Asia are growing at about twice the market growth rate, or about 36 percent a year, a senior executive said on Wednesday.

Shipments in the region for Hewlett-Packard's personal systems group are growing at around double the 18 percent rate for Asia's overall PC market, said Chin Hon Cheng, vice president of HP's Consumer Products & Mobile Business Group, Asia-Pacific and Japan.

"Some countries are growing at more than twice, but generally as an average we are growing at twice," Chin told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an HP product launch in Shanghai.

He declined to comment on future shipment growth.

Industry-wide personal computer shipments in Asia excluding Japan rose 18 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2007, according to preliminary data released by research firm International Data Corp. in April.

California-based HP's PC business made up around one-third of the company's total revenue of $94.1 billion for the four fiscal quarters to end-January, and it has 800 to 1,000 employees in China, Chin said.

According to research firm Gartner, Acer (2353.TW) has surpassed Lenovo (0992.HK) to become the world's third-largest PC vendor, trailing just behind U.S. brands Hewlett-Packard and Dell (DELL.O).

EYES ON ASIA

The Asia region -- which for Hewlett-Packard includes India, China, Southeast Asia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand -- makes up around 16 percent of the IT hardware and services company's total revenues, said Todd Bradley, executive vice president in the personal systems group.

The region's proportion of total company revenues will be higher in three to five years, he said.

China -- while not the fastest-growing market for Hewlett-Packard -- is a focus country for the company, which has a sales presence in more than 400 Chinese cities and hopes to add another 100 every year to target increasingly affluent consumers in smaller cities, Bradley added.

"We're seeing broad-based growth around the world -- China clearly a very significant piece of that, as well as India, as well as Brazil," Bradley said.

Hewlett-Packard on Tuesday raised its forecast for second-quarter revenue and earnings, citing strong results from its PC and servers businesses, and now expects to post revenue of $25.5 billion to $25.55 billion for the quarter, about $1 billion more than it had previously forecast.

Bradley was speaking on the sidelines of the HP mobility summit, which was held in Shanghai to launch a range of computer devices and underscore the growing importance of the Chinese market.

China's PC market, the world's second-largest by unit sales, is dominated by Beijing-based Lenovo Group (0992.HK).