Sales of personal computers in Thailand could hit a record low this year, contracting by 15% on mounting political concerns.
The country's political uncertainty is further depressing consumer sentiment and spending, resulting in a second down year in a row for PCs and the first double-digit contraction in sales.
In 2012, PC sales in Thailand reached 3.7 million units.
Jarit Sidhu, senior analyst at IDC (Thailand), said PC sales in the fourth quarter are expected to fall by 15% from the previous quarter, mainly due to political tensions.
He said Thailand's notebook market has been hit the hardest this year as sales of smartphones and tablets eat into market share.
Overall notebook shipments are also poised to dip by more than 20% this year from 2 million units last year.
Jeerawut Wongpimonporn, the country manager of Lenovo Thailand, a unit of the world's biggest PC maker, forecasts a plunge in PC sales to 3.2 million units this year, pressured by the sluggish local economy and the political crisis.
Lenovo plans to spend 20% more on marketing to boost spending among retail and small and medium-sized enterprises.
The number of companies with fewer than 400 employees in Thailand may be as high as 300,000.
Mr Jeerawut said the company is also expanding into high-growth products such as network-attached storage (NAS).
NAS involves a collective server that can be used to provide storage capacity to multiple users at a time. The global NAS market is expected to hit US$7 billion by 2017 with 15% compound growth in the 2013-17 period.
Lenovo expects to earn at least $1 million a month from NAS revenue next year, Mr Jeerawut said.