IDC's preliminary results show that the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) PC market grew 11% for the full year 2011 to reach 119 million units. While weaker than previous years, the growth remained healthy, especially considering the weak global economic cues that persisted throughout the year, highlighting the resilience in these Asian markets. In 4Q 2011 specifically, the market came in 3% ahead of IDC's initial forecasts with 11% year-on-year growth, as markets like China and Indonesia were partially insulated from the hard disk drive shortages that IDC had initially feared would hurt shipments.

"The PC market took a number of punches last year, be it from the uncertain global economy or from Media Tablets that competed for consumer attention," said Bryan Ma, Associate Vice President of Asia/Pacific Client Devices Research at IDC. "PCs will still face disk drive supply challenges in the early part of 2012, but IDC also expects the market to rebound quickly by the second half of the year to remain close to 10% growth for the year in the Asia/Pacific region."

Lenovo continued to lead the region for full year 2011 by not just holding strong in its home market China, but also posting robust growth in the rest of the region. Confusion surrounding the future of HP's PC business hurt the vendor in the second half of the year, undoing the gains it had made earlier. ASUS made strong efforts in the ASEAN region last year, while Dell continued to fortify its positions in China and India.