Philippines Consumer Electronics Report Q3 2012

BMI expects the Philippines IT market will grow by around 5% in 2012, which represents a deceleration compared with 2011. Despite an uncertain economic outlook, consumer electronics spending is likely to remain fairly strong in the coming quarters. Given the Philippines’ low PC penetration, many provincial markets are relatively untapped territories, while rural populations contain the largest number of potential first-time mobile handset purchasers. Vendors will seek profits from product innovation such as smartphones based on the Android operating system, and 3D and LED TV sets.
Headline Expenditure Projections Computer sales: US$1.8bn in 2011 to US$1.9bn in 2012, +5% in US dollar terms. Forecast in US dollar terms is downwardly revised due to the expected impact in H112 of the HDD shortage linked to the Thai floods.
AV sales: US$701mn in 2011 to US$777mn in 2012, +9% in US dollar terms. Forecast in US dollar terms is unchanged, with the main driver being demand for flat-screen TV sets.
Handset sales: US$1.87bn in 2011 to US$1.92bn in 2012, +3% in US dollar terms. Forecast in US dollar terms is unchanged but the Philippines is viewed as a promising market for smartphones.
Risk/Reward Ratings: The Philippine's score was 46.7out of 100.0. The country took 11th place in our latest RRR table, but has potential to rise over time due to rising device penetration.
Key Trends & Developments Demand from outside Manila will continue to drive market expansion in 2012. More vendors are signing up new distributors and opening stores nationwide. Cebu is seen as a gateway to provinces in Visayas and Mindanao. Meanwhile, PCs for schools programmes will be another driver for the Philippines computer market.
As around one-third of the Philippine population still use analogue sets, there is plenty of continued growth potential in digital TV sets. The Philippines also lags many other Asian countries in adoption of digital TV. The Philippines has around 9mn TV households and, despite the popularity of mobile handsets and other portable media devices, TV remains the platform by which Filipinos access news and entertainment. Penetration of LCD TV sets is currently less than 1% of the population, but is expected to reach 4-5% within the forecast period.
Because of the orientation of Filipinos towards social networking in the mobile space, the Philippines is regarded as a promising market for smartphones. In 2011, 60% growth in smartphone sales was expected, with shipments of around 2.9mn units.