PC Market Poised For Dramatic Growth in Emerging Markets

But what's even more amazing, is that Forrester believes that number will double by 2015—resulting in 2 billion PCs in use by the end of that time period. Just think, it will take roughly seven years to double the installed base, whereas it took about 27 years to get to where we're at today.

There are all sorts of reasons why I believe this is, indeed, possible. And why the PCs in other countries will probably look very little like they do here.

First off, thanks to the guilt-inducing work of Nicholas Negroponte and his One Laptop Per Child movement, the high-tech giants have woken up to the fact that the economics of the rest of the world are very different from those of the United States. Of the roughly 1 billion PCs that are expected to ship between 2008 and 2015, roughly 775 million of them will be deployed in Brazil, Russia, India and China, according to the Forrester report on Worldwide PC Adoption released June 11.

China alone, for example, could account for about 500 million of those systems, although the big factor here will be the aging population, Forrester notes.

The breakdown of the other countries is as follows: India (156 million), Brazil (78 million) and Russia (63 million). Four other Asia-Pacific countries were singled out by Forrester for compound annual growth of at least 24 percent through 2015. They are Vietnam, Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Eastern Europe, bright spots will include Czech Republic and Poland.

The economies of these emerging countries will dictate the makeup of those systems. In mature markets, such as the United States, innovation will continue to drive technology upgrades. But in markets where the annual income is lower, the focus will be on affordability at an average price tag of between $125 and $250, Forrester observes.

Solution providers with a hankering to break into these emerging markets will have other challenges to contend with that are not necessarily a factor in more mature countries, the Forrester report says. Those include volatile political regimes, a limited replacement market (meaning more time between upgrades from one platform to the next) and limited involvement (to date) of some of the larger OEMs including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba, Forrester reports.

So, how about it? Are these Forrester numbers to be believed? If so, what will the PC of 2015 look like (and cost). Anyone care to hazard an opinion?

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