According to IDC's preliminary results, the Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) PC market grew by 15 per cent sequentially and 36 per cent year-on-year in Q2-2010 to reach 27 million units, with nearly all countries posting double-digit year-on-year growth rates. The region was just 1 per cent below forecast, as stronger-than-expected desktop PC shipments helped to offset the shortfall in portable PCs, IDC reported.

"Portable PC shipments in markets like China and Indonesia came in short of our aggressive forecasts this quarter," said Bryan Ma, Associate Vice President of Asia Pacific Devices and Peripherals Research at IDC. "But heavy demand for notebooks will still be a key driver in the upcoming years despite potential competitive pressure coming from media tablets like Apple's iPad."

Fortunately, Thailand was able to recover more quickly than expected toward the end of the quarter as the political turmoil in the months prior subsided, thus helping the entire market there. Singapore was also on track despite earlier concerns about limited sales at the quarterly PC show, according to the research firm.

"Hong Kong was a bit slow given early notebook purchases and channel stocking in the previous quarter," said Kathy Sin, Manager of Asia Pacific Client Devices Research at IDC. "But the retail channel remains a key driver, with some vendors shipping heavy volumes toward the end of the quarter in order to prepare for the summer promotions."

Lenovo continued to lead the region while rival HP continued its downward slide, in part as it came off its strong performance in China last year. The commercial sector helped Dell sustain its third-place position given the vendor's historical strengths in that space.

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