One in every 30 Indians has a computer

NEW DELHI, INDIA: In spite of the overall subdued market, the total installed base of PCs in India surged past the 36 million units mark.

The country now has one personal computer for every 30 Indians, according to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Quarterly PC Tracker. This represents a significant improvement over the figures in March 2007, when the country had one computer for every 50 Indians.

The IDC report also said that the India PC market witnessed a seven per cent quarter-on-quarter growth in shipments in the first quarter of calendar year 2009 over fourth quarter of 2008.

A total of 1.67 million units of Client PCs were shipped during the January-March quarter of 2009. Desktop PC shipments registered a sequential growth of nine per cent QoQ, while notebook PC shipments recorded a growth of three percent QoQ.

However, this is 19 per cent down compared to the PC shipment of 2.07 million in the first quarter of 2008. The reports said that the overall PC shipments to the commercial segment were buoyed by demand from the government, education and banking (nationalized banks) segments.

It said the government sector had the potential to spend more in the first quarter of 2009 and some of this spending is expected to resurface after the formation of a new government at the Centre. The top three players in the India Client PC market during 1Q CY2009 were HP, HCL and Dell in that order, the report added.

“Though the Year-on-Year (YoY) ‘growth’ rate of India Client PC shipments dropped 19 per cent, this was an improvement over the previous quarter, indicating the market has perhaps already bottomed out,” said Sumanta Mukherjee, lead analyst, Computing Products Research, IDC India, a subsidiary of CyberMedia.

“With a number of significant government-funded education and e-Governance projects lined up in the coming quarters, a lot will hinge on how quickly the new government settles down to business,” he added.