In this file photograph a Technoland employee displays a new laptop to two customers.

COMPUTER hardware prices are on their way back up and raising industry hopes that the market is recovering too, several industry figures said last week.

They say prices have begun to rebound since the second week of June for two reasons: limited stock availability and the dollar to kyat exchange rate.

“Prices for a range of hardware items including laptops, monitors and motherboards have been increasing locally and retailers are being forced to revise their price tags upward,” said U Kyaw Ye Tun, the sales and marketing manager of Cyber City Co, which distributes a number of computer products.

U Aung Kyaw Moe, a director at Client Focus Technology Group, which is an authorised distributor of Epson printers, tipped that the hardware prices have increased by between 5 and 7 percent, adding that his company plans to charge 5pc more starting from this month.

Manufacturers, he said, were raising prices and his company was merely following suit, adding that he believed that the manufacturers were doing this to recoup their losses during the recent recession.

“The price changes are significant for LCD [liquid crystal display] monitors. In May, an 18-inch monitor sold for about K124,000 but now it priced at about K135,000.

“One gigabyte of extra RAM memory is K18,000 now, when it was K1000 cheaper in May,” he said.

He added that demand had recovered significantly since February, when consumers were rare and prices hit their lowest levels.

Daw Thabyae Aung, the sales manager for Technoland Computer Centre in Kyauktada township, said demand has recovered a lot from what it was in February. She said that at that time all the computer retailers were trying to offload stock as quickly as possible.

“The market situation has almost returned to normal and that super-tough competition between different computer retailers has trailed off,” she said.

But retailers are still trying to attract customers with discounts and gifts, while also trying to be competitive in terms of price and service.

“Some computer products have increased in price, especially LCD monitors. And while those price increases are not great, they are certainly higher than last February,” she said.

She added that retailers are focusing on finding individual customers rather than businesses that might normally buy many computers in one time.

“Most of the big buyers today are internet cafés as you need about 30 or 40 computers if you want to open an internet café. But it’s rainy season and very few internet café start during the rainy season,” she said.

She added that corporate buyers – such as companies, non-government organisations and businesses – have also been reducing their purchasing and buying only one or two computers at a time as part of their cost cutting measures.

U Aung Kyaw Moe, of Client Focus Technology Group, said he noticed the same trend and estimated that the purchasing of corporate buyers decreased by 30-40pc compared to the period before the financial crisis.

He added that his company has taken the same tack as Technoland and is working hard to find individual customers.