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.
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.
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.
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.