At the same time, the PC market, a major part of the hardware market, could drop by up to 50 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, said Dragos Nicolaescu, Country Manager of Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) Romania, who estimates a 20-30 percent annual decline in FSC’s sales in this year’s first quarter.
Moreover, local notebook sales in the first quarter could make up one fifth of the total market of the previous year, considering that the industry is presently blocked, Bogdan Iftemie, Sales Manager of Acer Romania, told Business Standard. “Our sales are in the same situation. We focused a lot in this period on clearing stocks of last year’s final quarter,” said Iftemie.
According to officials in this industry, the current economic conditions and the drop in demand on this market led to a change in priorities of hardware importers, in an attempt to keep the decline in sales under control. Players in the field say that the market is expected to bounce back in the second quarter, once public projects are re-launched.
