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IDC sees PC sales in India slowly picking up

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CIOL Bureau
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MUMBAI: Sales of personal computers in India picked up in the period from

January to March compared to the previous quarter, which was poor, but market

conditions remain "difficult," market researcher IDC said recently.

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IDC estimates 474,000 PCs were sold in January-March, up 7.2 from the

previous quarter -- but 5.2 per cent fewer than the estimate for the same period

last year.

IDC said in a note to clients last week it expected PC sales to show clearer

improvement over the second half of this year, but said a "true recovery

will have to wait until 2003". It forecast sales would rise just eight per

cent this year but by 29 per cent in calendar 2003.

The growth rate has dropped sharply because of the slowdown in the Indian IT

industry, which has produced more pink slips than new jobs in the past 15

months. When the IT industry was booming, families strove to buy PCs to give

their children a headstart.

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Now, says Sameer Kochhar, the managing director of Skoch Consultancy

Services, an IT and telecom consultancy based in Gurgaon, a suburb of Delhi,

"PCs have stopped being an aspiration purchase." In 2001, PC sales in

India rose 18 per cent to 2.09 million. That was a sharp slowdown from increases

of 60 per cent the previous year and 42 per cent in 1999, according to IDC's

estimates.

Assemblers



The number of computers sold in India is an educated guess because heavy
taxation has created a huge "grey market" for unbranded machines sold

by hundreds of assemblers.

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IDC's figures show foreign computer manufacturing giants like Hewlett Packard

and Dell continue to lose market share in India to domestic makers, especially

to assemblers selling the cheapest machines.

In the period from January to March, multinational brands accounted for just

18.3 per cent of the Indian PC market, down from 19.9 per cent in 2001 and 23.4

per cent the previous year. Assemblers made 65.4 per cent of the PCs sold in

India in this year's first quarter -- up from 59.9 per cent in calendar 2000,

according to IDC.

Four Indian companies -- HCL Technologies , Wipro Ltd., Zenith and Vintron --

made the rest. Of the 2.09 million PCs sold in India in 2001, about 2.02 million

were desktop computers, 38,830 were notebook computers and 35,672 were servers

costing less than $25,000, the IDC figures showed.

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