TAIPEI, Taiwan — In what seems like a rosy opportunity for some of today's hard-hit PC makers, China's state planners hope to see 70 million computer owners by 2005, up from about 19 million today.
With sales of PCs sluggish worldwide, China is still showing staying power. On Wednesday (Aug. 15), China's largest computer maker, Legend Holdings Ltd., said its first-quarter profits surged to the higher than expected target of $32 million. Legend sells one of every three computers in China, with IBM, Compaq and Samsung being distant competitors. The company said first-quarter PC sales totaled 651,000 units, a 5 percent sequential increase and a rise of more than 25 percent from a year ago.
Despite a global slowdown, computer sales in China are expected to rise 25 to 30 percent in 2001. As part of China's drive toward "informationization," a state planning commission is projecting that information technology will account for 7 percent of the country's gross domestic product by 2005, up from about 4 percent today.
Legend, in which the state owns a majority share, is one of the biggest benefactors of the country's ambitious effort to upgrade its IT sector and modernize public infrastructure. A contract with the China State Tax Bureau reaped the sale of 17,000 PCs alone, and the company has another ongoing promotion with the State Ministry of Education, targeting primary and secondary schools.
But such lucrative contracts may become harder to come by in the future, because Legend is expected to face greater competition from its well-organized rivals after China enters the World Trade Organization. Nevertheless, the company still expects growth to average 30 percent annually over the next three to five years, compared to less than 10 percent for the rest of the world, according to Gartner Dataquest.
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