The Sars outbreak helped boost second-quarter personal computer sales in China, according to International Data Corp.
Preliminary figures from the research house, released yesterday, show mainland PC shipments reached 2.9 million units in the three months to June 30 - a 5 per cent increase from the first quarter and 14 per cent higher than the same period a year ago.
'Students who had schools shut down could use PCs for remote communication,' said Bryan Ma, personal systems senior research manager at IDC Asia-Pacific. 'In some cases people planned to buy a PC later in the year, but because of Sars they bought earlier.'
Mr Ma said customers were attracted to brand names.
'The large vendors had an advantage because they could deliver straight to homes and they could open some call centres [to handle customer inquiries],'' he said
'Major vendors like Legend and Founder benefited tremendously from their big brand names as people were obviously afraid to go to shopping malls.'
