The latest quarterly report from global market intelligence firm IDC shows that the second quarter of 2012 isn’t the happiest one for the PC market in both the Philippines and particularly Indonesia. The PC market in the Philippines saw a little growth of only 1.5 percent (total shipments of 551,000 units); but the country didn’t record any decline on the previous quarter.

The report showed that the growth in the Philippines’ market can be mainly attributed to the smaller PC vendors’ growth in the country. They were able to take advantage of in-demand mini notebooks not yet fully fulfilled by the top two vendors, Acer and Samsung. The trend is predicted to continue with the top two vendors facing stiff competition for the rest of the year.

What to expect in the third quarter? The launch of Windows 8 soon will affect the Philippines market quite significantly. Vendors would want to hold their old stock because of that. But modest growth could still be recorded, IDC reckons, as a result of projected government and enterprise spending.

In Indonesia

The same can’t be said for Indonesia as the country suffered a decline of 6.5 percent (total shipments of 1,300,000 units), as there was a fall in demand in the market, as much as 22 percent. IT project delays by the government in the education sector and the volatile currency also did not help much during Q2. Deddie Sionader, the client devices market analyst at IDC Indonesia, said that consumers’ attention was also distracted by the mobile phone and tablet markets.

Acer and Asus are still the number one and two PC vendors in Indonesia. HP was able to take the third position from Toshiba, which now drops to fourth place.

[Source: IDC #1 and #2 via Kompas, Original picture source]

The Top Brand Awards 2012, conducted by Frontier Consulting Group and Marketing magazine, wrapped up last night at Hotel Mulia, Jakarta. The award lists extensive brand categories in Indonesia ranging from food products to automotives. Here we bring to you a brief overview of the tech category winners:

Online Shopping Category

The winner for the new category ‘online shop’ is Tokobagus.com with an astounding 47.5 percent of the vote, making it a clear winner compared to runner up Kaskus with 15.6 percent. It’s quite interesting that e-commerce giant Multiply didn’t make it into the top four. Third place goes to Berniaga.com with 9.2 percent and fourth place to Bhinneka.com with 3.3 percent.

On this occasion, Ichwan Sitorus, the PR manager of TokoBagus shared some of their recent stats via Kabar Bisnis:

• There are millions of advertisement listings, with about 70,000 to 100,000 new daily ads.
• Daily number of visitors is 800,000 to 1,000,000.
• Monthly transaction value is reaching IDR 1.4 billion ($148,000) to 1.5 billion ($158,000) in 2012.

Mobile and Smartphones Category

In the mobile phone category, Nokia is champion with an impressive 54.2 percent, leaving the rest of the pack behind. The other runners-up didn’t even reach ten percent. They included second place Huawei with 8.5 percent, third place Samsung with 4.8 percent, and fourth place Nexian with 4.6 percent.

Now on to the smartphone category, did Samsung or the iPhone win it? No. Indonesia definitely loves Blackberry as it is the victor against Nokia in that category with 40.7 percent and 37.9 percent respectively. Samsung and Nexian took third and fourth places with 6.6 percent and 3.9 percent. Apple’s iPhone was fifth place in the vote with 3.8 percent.

The winners didn’t change much for both the mobile phone and smartphone category from the 2011 awards. The only difference in the mobile phone category is that Sony Ericsson fell from third spot in 2011 to fifth spot in 2012. iPhone had a similar fate in the smartphone category, dropping from third place in 2011 to fifth place in 2012, overtaken by new player Nexian.

Notebook Category

In this category the resounding champion is Acer with 42.1 percent. Second and third places go to Toshiba and HP with 15.9 percent and 13.8 percent respectively. Apple is in fourth place with a meager 6.1 percent. They’re all in the same exact positions as in 2011.

About the Top Brand Survey

The Top Brand survey was conducted among a total of 3,250 random respondents from eight big cities in Indonesia: Bandung, Jakarta, Makassar, Medan, Semarang, Surabaya, Balikpapan, and Pekanbaru. Respondents are aged 15 to 65 with an average expendable income per month of between IDR 750,000 ($79) and IDR 3,500,000 ($370). For the complete list of winners, you can see it here.

Yesterday we told you about Lenovo’s new IdeaTab S2109 Android 4.0 tablet, which looks like it will be a good step forward for the Beijing-based manufacturer. Not to be outdone, Japan’s Toshiba (TYO:6502) is planning to launch its own Android 4.0 tablet lineup soon in the US market, to be called the ‘Excite’ tablet family.

The tablets will come in three sizes (see picture [1]), 7.7-inch, 10-inch, and 13-inch; or in Goldlocks parlance, “too small,” “too big,” and “just right.” All three models will sport 1 GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera, a 2 megapixel front-facing camera, and Tegra 3 quad-core processors.

While most tablets typically measure around that 9- or 10-inch space, the 13-inch model is certainly an unusual direction for Toshiba to take here. But a company representative, speaking with Ars Technica, noted that two thirds of their Toshiba Thrive tablets were sold to customers over the age of 55. So perhaps the 13-inch is something that could work [2].

The tablet is big, but remains 0.4 inches thin, and weighs in at a single kilogram. The screen will have a native resolution of 1600 x 900, and it claims up to 13 hours of battery life or 7 days on stand-by.

Pricing for the 7-, 10-, and 13-inch Excite tablets will start at $499, $449, and $649 respectively, with the 10-inch going on sale in May, with the others to follow in June.

Fujitsu Arrows Kiss handset (F-03D)

Some readers might recall our look at the Japanese smartphone market last month which showed that the iPhone had become the top dog for the first time, taking the first spot over Sharp in Q4 2011. Until that quarter, which saw Apple take a huge jump with the success of the iPhone 4S, it had also had less market share than Fujitsu/Toshiba [1].

Those two companies had merged their mobile businesses back in 2010, but today Fujistu (TYO:6702) announced that it has received Toshiba’s 19.9 percent ownership stake in that business, which will now be called Fujitsu Mobile Communications.

Apple’s success in Japan has been making domestic phone makers like Fujitsu look to markets abroad. When NEC announced job cuts a few months back (most from its mobile unit), it cited foreign smartphone players as one of the factors negatively affecting its business. And while Fujitsu still had 18.3 percent of the domestic market in Q4 2011, it intends to compete in the US and Europe smartphone markets.

Meanwhile Panasonic (TYO:6752), another Japanese handset maker, has just announced that it’s shifting all mobile phone production to China and Malaysia, possibly as early as this summer. Like Fujitsu, Panasonic is also eyeing the overseas market, with its Eluga handset scheduled for a European release this month.

Whether or not either of these companies can significantly improve their businesses by snagging new customers overseas remains to be seen. Both push waterproofing as a selling point in their phones, which seems to be in high demand in Japan, but I don’t think it’s a feature that overseas customers care about so much.

The disaster has displaced millions and killed dozens this past week in Thailand.

In the market for a new hard drive? Better buy it sooner rather than later, as a global shortage will probably jack up prices on the devices soon.

That’s because the once-in-a-lifetime floods that have inundated a third of Thailand and displaced nine million people are also causing major disruptions in the hard disk drive (HDD) industry supply chain.

Most notable is the massive hit that the world’s top HDD producer Western Digital (NYSE:WDC) took when floodwaters burst into its two Thailand factories at Navanakorn and Bang Pa-in industrial estates outside Bangkok. The company has had to close indefinitely both factories, where it produces 60 percent of all its hard drives. Western Digital CEO Timothy Leyden told reporters in a conference call this week that they estimate capacity will be affected for several quarters.

Thailand is the second-largest country for production of hard drives after China, according to market research firm UHS iSuppli. Indeed, Toshiba (TYO:6502), the world’s fourth largest hard drive producer with a 10 percent market share, has halted all of its production in Thailand due to flooding. Number two hard drive producer Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) has extensive operations in Thailand, but has not had to stop production because its factories are in the northeast where flooding has been less severe.

iSuppli stats for Q2 2011 showing world's top HDD producers.

Worse for PC Industry than Japanese Tsunami?

One key component in the supply chain of hard drives has also been majorly affected: the motor. Japanese company Nidec (TYO:6594), which produces a whopping 70 percent of hard drive motors in the world, has had to close all of its factories in Ayutthaya, the ancient former capital which got inundated earliest in this ongoing disaster.

Inside a Western Digital hard disk drive.

These combined kinks are having an effect on the worldwide supply chain that’s making even Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook nervous. Cook warned this week that he’s “virtually certain there will be an overall industry shortage of disk drives,” according to the AP. The shortage of HD components would only affect some Mac computers, but not Apple’s ultra-lucrative iPhones and iPads, which use more modern solid state drives (SSDs) – aka: flash memory – which don’t need motors.

In fact, the Thai floods could have an even worse impact on the PC industry than the Japanese tsunami, according to tech analyst Jason Nyoland, as quoted in the Financial Times.

It’s unclear at this time how much the price of the stoppages will be passed on to consumers. But if you need more space or an external HDD for back-ups, it’d be prudent to buy that new hard drive now.

Last week when we visited CEATEC 2011, we managed to spend a few moments trying out the Toshiba Regza AT700 tablet. Billed as the world’s thinnest and lightest 10.1-inch tablet computer, the AT700 measures in at 7.7mm thin and weighs a paltry 558 grams. Compare that to the iPad 2 which has a thickness of 8.8mm and weighs 601 grams.

The tablet runs on Android 3.2 and is powered by a 1.20 GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor. There 1 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. Battery life is supposedly good for at least seven hours.

You can check out a quick demo of the interface below. The polished metal backing looks very slick, and with that very slim profile, it feels pretty nice in your hands.

Is it a legitimate competitor for the iPad? While we missed the company’s stage presentation, Toshiba reportedly hopes that the AT700 can help its tablet share can rise to 10 percent.

Photo: Daylife

While Apple put up a very solid 17 percent growth over the past six months to reach 3.9 million mobile subscribers, Android has doubled it’s subscriber base in the last three months alone to reach 4.6 million in March. Both companies are clearly doing well, but Android’s recent trajectory has given it the number one position from Apple, and should keep it there for some time.

Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS represent 87 percent of the entire smartphone market in Japan. But expect Android’s dominance to continue, as even Softbank – the current carrier for iPhone in Japan. When we spoke to him in April, Softbank EVP Ted Matsumoto openly stated that Android holds great promise, and that realistically “100 percent of our users cannot be iPhone users.” In addition, DCM’s recent A-fund (backed by gaming giant GREE) will do much to enhance the Android ecosystem.

The president of comScore Japan KK, Daizo Nishitani, commented on Japan’s recent enthusiasm for smartphones:

Although smartphone adoption rates in Japan have historically lagged behind the U.S. and Europe, we have witnessed the rapid increase of smartphone users in Japan throughout the past several months fueled by iPhone and Android devices. Smartphone adoption is increasing not only in the larger cities like Tokyo, but throughout the smaller regions as well, signaling what could be the beginning of a tide change in the Japanese mobile market.

Sony Xperia Acro, summer model

As for the most popular handsets in Japan, that space is still dominated by the iPhone, with three models occupying a top five spot. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia and Toshiba’s REGZA Phone T-01C rank at the second and fifth spots respectively as of March.

1. Apple – iPhone 4 32GB
2. Sony Ericsson – Xperia
3. Apple – iPhone 4 16GB
4. Apple – iPhone 3G S 32GB
5. Toshiba – REGZA Phone T-01C

Photos: Aeworldmap, sleetherz