Low-Income Buyers Make Brazil 5th-Biggest PC Market

Brazilian consumers are putting better credit offers and growing wealth into computers, and HP and Dell are the beneficiaries. The country is now the 5th-biggest PC market in the world, and low-income buyers are fueling the boom there. Computer shipments rose 38% last year to 10.7 million, Bloomberg reports, as overall purchases passed TVs for the first time ever.

Brazil now accounts for nearly half of all tech purchases in Latin America. The trend has been a boon for the US sellers, as they’ve been able to offset a slowing American economy—and as local tax breaks have enabled them to drop their prices. “You have a consumer market that's exploding as people have more access to credit,” said one jubilant HP rep of Brazil. (More Brazil stories.)