Real-Time News According to the latest analysis report of the Korean IDC (www.idckorea.com), the domestic PC market for the 2nd quarter of 2006 has dropped by 12% to 1.04 million units compared with the previous quarter. The home PC marked has most sharply dropped by 20% compared with the previous quarter. The reason is that the uncertainty of recent domestic business prospects has lessened the consumer's desire. According to the recent report, the consumer's desire index for May 2005 has fallen below 100, not being expected to recover in the near future. Also, the German World Cup 2006 has mainly created the demand for PDPs and LCD TVs instead of PCs. Meanwhile, the PC market for the public sector and education has also fallen by 17% compared with the first quarter. The reason is that in the first quarter, most of the consumer PC replacement budget has been spent, and so in the second quarter, only a small portion of the budget for PC replacement has been spent. However, the business PC market has increased by 8%. This is because the demand in the manufacturing and communication sector has increased, along with the special boom for game PCs which has recently caused a scandal nationwide. By form factor, or product type, 750,000 desktop PC units have been sold, and 290,000 notebook units have been sold. The relative importance of notebook computers stands at 28%. The relative importance of notebook computers by market is as follows: 34% for home, 8% for public sector and education, and 24% for business. As usual, the home PC market is continually taking the lead in the demand creation of notebook computers. According to the IDC's June 2006 Global PC Market Forecasting, the estimated weight of notebook computers in the world PC market has stood at 36%, showing that it is 8% higher than the domestic weight of 28%. The reason why the domestic weight of notebook computers is lower than the world average is that the public and education sectors still prefer the desktop PC, and also many companies are only slowly building a mobility environment. It is also noticeable that as for home PCs, instead of replacing the desktop PC the notebook computer is mainly used as an auxiliary PC. Because of this, the domestic demand for desktop PCs is not expected to be reduced. This is a feature of the domestic PC market. In particular, about 20,000 PC rooms in Korea are expected to play an important role in creating the demand for desktop PCs. Kwon Sang-jun, senior researcher of Korea IDC in charge of the domestic PC market analysis said, "As diverse new concept PCs are launched into the market in the second half of this year, more useroriented product positioning and marketing will be required." He added that the PC market for 2006 is expected to increase by 14% to 4.29 units compared with the previous year. On the long-term forecasting until 2010, the annual average growth rates of both desktop PCs and notebook computers are expected to increase by 3.0% and 11.2% respectively. Also the IDC forecasts that the notebook computer will take the lead in the PC market because of the increasing emphasis of a mobilie environment. Senior researcher Kwon said, "In 2010, the desktop PC in the domestic market will stand at 3.31 million, and the notebook computer at 1.53 million, and so the total PC market will reach 4.84 million."