Steven Frantzen, head of International Data Corp’s Commonwealth of Independent States and Eastern European Expertise Centre, has predicted that the central and east European computer market will experience double bubble growth as small business, service companies and consumers start buying even as banks, government agencies and joint venture companies slow down their purchases. Frantzen said that only in Hungary had the size of the market levelled off since what he described as the ‘filling up stage’ of the early 1990s. But he warned, Everything happens in Hungary first. It was the first country [in the region] to assemble personal computers, it is the first market where brand name personal computers reached 50% of the market, and the first where non-impact printers became the predominant technology. He said the large multinational companies had expected the current lull and said of the second stage of growth, What everyone wants to know is ‘when’.
