Indian PC mkt up 35% in Q2

MUMBAI: The Indian PC market registered a growth of 34.6 percent shipping more than 760,000 units in the second quarter of 2004, according to Gartner, Inc. This includes desktops, notebooks and servers. India garnered 9.23 percent market share in the Asia Pacific region.

"Healthy economic conditions coupled with increase in run-rate business resulted in a good second quarter this year. The election quarter and expectation of further reduction in prices due to the financial budget caused a marginal halt in desktop purchases by consumers during the last two weeks in June. But this did not really impact the overall upward trend in purchases" said Gartner India analyst-computing systems Vinod Nair. "Consumer, education and small and medium business contributed a large part of the shipment this quarter," he added.

According to Gartner, while desktops registered 32 percent growth, notebooks grew steadily at 123 percent. Notebooks constituted five percent of the total shipments this quarter. Nair commented, "Narrowing price differential between desktops and notebooks has catalyzed notebook purchases especially within the small and medium businesses segment".

"The next step for vendors would be to provide attractive finance schemes with monthly installments comparable to those of consumer durable goods. This will increase affordability and further expand the PC buying audience," adds Nair.

From a market share perspective, Hewlett-Packard maintained top position with 14.9 percent followed by HCL with 11.9 percent. According to Gartner, increased focus on the consumer segment has helped both these players increase their market shares. IBM also improved its market share this quarter with better business from the medium business segment. Gain in market share for these vendors has come at the cost of the white-box assemblers.

Asia Pacific PC market shipments in the second quarter 2004 increased 16.5 percent compared to a year ago, equivalent to 2.1 percent sequentially. China, India and Thailand remained the key engine of growth in the region, with growth rates exceeding 30 percent. PC shipments from the three countries make up 60 percent of total PCs shipped in APAC.