According to the latest NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly China PC Shipment and Forecast Report, rapid growth of the China PC market is driven by the mobile PC segment, which includes notebooks, mini-notes, and tablet PCs. Total PC shipments in 2H’11 reached 53.4M, up 12.7% from the first half of the year. China is the largest market for desktop PCs and related displays (monitors or displays in all-in-one PCs), the #3 market for tablet PCs, and the #4 market for notebook PCs and mini-notes. For the PC market as a whole, China is #3, behind North America and EMEA.

The Quarterly China PC Shipment and Forecast Report noted a slowdown in the desktop PC market in 2H’11, up only 1% compared to 1H’11 and down 3% Y/Y. The all-in-one PC market continued to show good growth, up 32% compared to 1H’11.

Although shipments in desktop PCs are flat, the mobile PC market continued to show strong growth, reaching 26.5M in 2H’11, up 25% from 1H’11. In Q3’11, mobile PC shipments in China exceeded desktop PC shipments for the first time, thanks to the tremendous growth of tablet PCs.

“China continues to try to bolster domestic production of LCD panels to try to meet demand for both PC and TV displays,” said Robin Wu, PC and TFT Analyst for NPD DisplaySearch. “But most of China’s LCD production is from smaller Gen 5 fabrication lines, which cannot compete with larger Korean, Japanese, and Taiwanese fabs in large panel production; these fabs have thus focused production onsmall/medium panel production, causing some shortages,” noted Wu. For example, 19” wide panels (the mainstream size for desktop monitors in China) were in short supply, affecting Chinese brands such as AOC, which saw its LCD monitor shipments decrease 10% in Q3’11.