NEW DELHI, INDIA: While the festival season might imbibe you with good cheer the news on the price front is not so great. In view of the dollar appreciation coupled with rise in price of some components, few major consumer electronics makers, particularly those of PCs, digital cameras, laptops and photocopying machines will be hiking the prices of their products this October.

This is the second time that the prices of IT products have witnessed a hike this year year. Prior to this, many vendors including, HP, Intex, Logitech etc had hiked the prices of their products in the month of January, owing to CBEC's decision to implement excise based MRP on IT products.

In the PC segment, HP has already hiked the prices to the tune of 10 percent, while Dell has resolved to hike it anywhere between 5-10 percent.

HCL however, has already revised the prices and increased it by about four percent; Intex is hiking the prices of desktop PCs, monitors and peripheral products by three to four percent whereas for the laptops the price hike is slightly higher at about seven to eight percent.

Canon has hiked the prices of their printer products in the range of 8-10 percent whereas the price rise for its laser compatible products will be around five percent. AOC has hiked the prices by six to eight percent.

Going against the trend in the segment Sony, has resolved to maintain the prices for its product even as their competitors are hiking it.

LG has also planned to hike the prices across different product segments and will do the same in a phased manner. When contacted, R Manikandan, GM—Sales and Marketing, IT Products mentioned, "Since the dollar price now stands at Rs 47 it will bring about an increase in the prices of our products in the range of six to seven percent. However, we will hike the prices in a phased manner and it will be at about 2.5 percent to start with. While the hike in the LCD monitors will be less, ODD will witness major price changes."

Commenting about the latest round of hike in prices Sameer Garde, Country GM for Dell India, "Yes it is true that there has been about 5-10 percent increase in the prices of our products, though there may be variations across models and different configurations. The hike primarily is based on external circumstances related to changes in currency rate and corresponding increase in component prices."

Alok Bhardwaj, Senior VP, Canon India shared that the hike is mostly going to affect the vendors. "Till now the hike was affecting our bottomline, but now the situation is such that the bottomline cannot take the hit anymore we have resolved to hike the prices across various product categories in the range of 8-10 percent."

HP is also likely to increase the prices across its product range by around 10 percent. The primary reason for this hike is dollar appreciation coupled with price hike for some components. "We will be increasing the prices soon and the hike will be extended to the entire product range of HP PSG India," said Ravi Swaminathan, President—Personal Systems Group, HP India.

However, channel partners were of the view that the hike would not affect them a lot since the customers as it is are aware of rise in exchange rates. K Gopinath, a channel partner based in Chennai and CEO of Modern Computers, opined, "The price hike won't affect the channel or retail market, as the cash flow is still there. Customers understand that the price hike is due to the appreciation of dollar rate and all of a sudden the IT budgets cannot be axed and the business will keep going."