First of all thanks for this forum, it allowed me to find some precious links.
I'm a french student currently in the US doing a project on the computer retail market (more precisely hard disc drive retail market) in Asia Pacific.
Right now I'm working on Singapore and I'm trying to have a clear picture of the retail market for IT products there.
Here is my current perception of the market, some stuff are certainly totally false so if you have a few seconds to correct me, I would really appreciate.
Form what I understood, there are two main places to buy computer parts in Singapore:
- Sim Lim Square
- Funan The IT Mall
Both are malls with hundreds of different "mom and pops" stores where the prices are very low due to the fierce competition that they have between each others.
I found a few other "bigger" retailers:
- Challenger (highly specialized in computers)
- Best Denki
- Harvey Norman
- Courts
- Safe Superstore
- PK Computer Pte Ltd (highly specialized in computers) --> I included this one because they seem to have 3 stores, so it's not like the other ones in Funan and Sim Lim but I'm not sure
Those are selling some IT products. Not so much "Do It Yourself" kits (like they don't sell CPUs or parts like that). I imagine that their prices are higher and they target people that don't know much about computers and may feel intimidated to go to Sim Lim or Funan... I haven't been really able to check that stuff as their websites are empty (no products/prices).
I'm trying to find some E-tailers (websites that sell computer parts) but I have a really hard time finding a single one. My conclusion is that Singapore being a "small" country, there is no need to go online to find cheap prices and then be delivered at home as Sim Lim and Funan are only a few minutes away. The only thing that I found (thanks to this forum) was a list of prices for some stores in Sim Lim, but nothing where you can buy online). So is there any places where you can buy computer parts (cpu, ram, hdd) online in Singapore?
Another question that I have is if people in Singapore are more tech savy than the average american for instance. As there are litteraly hundreds of small stores selling computer parts, I feel that most Singaporeans' computers are computers that they have built own their own (or built according to their needs in those stores).
I have one example to illustrate that.
If you want to buy an external drive in Singapore, 95% of the things that you'd find would be internal drives and external enclosures that you have to assemble to make your own external hard drive.
In the US for instance most people would buy a final product already built (like a Maxtor or Western Digital external unit).
Would you agree with the fact that people in Singapore, on average, are more tech savy that americans/europeans for instance?
Thanks a lot for your comments regarding my current vision (well... not very detailed but it's not that easy to understand where and how people buy their stuff when you're not in the country, believe me
)Axel
