BEIJING, Feb. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- AFTER a year of explosive growth in China, the world's number two personal computer maker Dell Inc. said Friday it hoped to triple its overall growth rate this year.

    The company may even be able to push its overall market share --- which research firm Gartner pegged at 6.8 percent last year -- into the double-digit range, Bill Amelio, president of Dell's Asia Pacific region, said.

    "That's our stretch goal," he said.

    Dell's sales in China soared to about 60 percent last year, making the country Dell's fourth-largest market behind the United States, Britain and Japan.

    At the company's current growth rate, China would take the number three spot from Japan in about three years.

    PC sales in China rose 10.4 percent last year to 13.3 million units, accounting for nearly half of all computers sold in the Asia Pacific region, Gartner has said.

    For this year, International Data Corp. forecasts that the PC market will grow about 19 percent, which would mean Dell's China sales would need to grow 57 percent or more to meet Amelio's target.

    Among the top five players in China, Dell posted the biggest year-on-year gains to take the number two spot from Chinese computer maker Founder Electronics, which finished the year with a 6.2 percent market share compared with Dell's 6.8 percent.

    Domestic giant Legend Group Ltd., which is in the process of changing its name to Lenovo, continued to dominate the market with 2.8 million units sold for a 21.3 percent share.

    China outperformed Japan last year to become the world's second-largest PC market.

    Ambitious goals

    Dell's 2004 goals for China are ambitious, said Nomura International analyst Theodore Teo, who covers Legend but not Dell.

    "It's not impossible, but you have to be very aggressive," he said. "They must be doing something very right. I haven't seen that kind of market share growth before in China, not even from Legend."

    Dell's growth to date has come largely at the expense of smaller players, but that could change if the company continues its aggressive expansion, said Deutsche Bank analyst Fung Ee Lim.

    "Clearly, Dell's market share gain hasn't had a significant impact on Legend," he said. "But going forward, at some point Dell will probably be looking to take market share from Legend."

    Amelio said Dell's profitability in China and Asia in general still lagged behind the company's worldwide levels, but that the gap had narrowed.

    Asia accounted for 11 percent of Dell's net revenues in the three months ending Jan. 30 -- up 10 percent from a year earlier. The United States accounted for 67 percent of Dell's revenues, while Europe made up 22 percent.

    "Typically, when you go into a new market you have to build up scale," Fung said. "You have to have a critical mass in place to start. If you're growing significantly, you've got to keep putting down infrastructure fast."

    Dell has focused most of its China efforts to date on corporate sales, in contrast to rival Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's number one PC maker, which made a concerted push to enter the consumer PC market last year.

    Amelio said fierce competition at the lower end of the market would limit Dell's activities on the consumer side in China for the moment to more profitable, higher-end models.

    "We have a crawl, walk, run strategy," he said. "We're targeting consumer, there's no question about it. But we want to make sure we're in it to be profitable. We're focused at the higher end configurations where there's still the ability to make money."

    Amelio said Dell's entry into the liquid crystal display television sector had received a strong reception in Japan -- the only market where it recently began selling the product.

    Dell is just one of a number of PC makers to enter the field, joining such giants as Hewlett-Packard and Gateway, as the differences between PCs and televisions starts to blur. Legend is also considering such a move.

    "Based on our experience in Japan, I'm going to take a look across the region" at other markets, Amelio said. "Clearly, the next market of choice would be Australia. China is such a big market as well that we would consider it." (Shenzhen Daily-Agencies)