Telecom Lead Asia: Consumers in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, spent over $4.72 billion on nearly 8.8 million tablets and laptops during January to September 2012.

The spent by consumers across six key markets in Southeast Asia reflects a substantial growth of 12 percent in value and 26 percent in volume compared to the same period last year, according to GfK Asia retail audit findings.

The overall worth of the combined laptop and tablet markets in each and every country expanded between 5 to 22 percent with all markets managing to achieve robust double-digit volume growth of up to 37 percent.

“Southeast Asia’s laptop and tablet markets will continue to remain buoyant in the coming months with the region’s major developing markets being the growth engines,” said Gerard Tan, account director for digital technology at GfK Asia.

Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia are the three biggest markets for such gadgets and collectively consume over 70 percent of the region’s sales volume while contributing 67 percent to the overall dollar value.

Consumption of laptops and tablets in the largest market, Indonesia, reached 2.76 million units—an increase of 37 percent over the last year and collecting revenue totaling nearly $1.24 billion.

Malaysia ranked second in both sales volume and value, thanks to consumers there spending nearly $1.1 billion on 2 million of these devices.

Tablets on the Android operating system (OS) have been dominating the market in both of these countries, with over seven in every ten sold (72 percent) being an Android tablet.

Sales volume of ultrathin laptops, defined as those which are 2 cm or less in thickness, grew 259 percent over last year while tablet sales more than doubled. To date, tablets make up a third (33 percent) of the total sales value of the overall market, compared to only 19 percent a year ago.

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