PC mart grows 35% in third quarter

Gartner, provider of research and analysis for the global IT industry, has stated that the Indian PC market has grown 35 percent in the third quarter for 2004.

According to a company release, the Indian market has grown by 35.1 per cent shipping more than 885,000 units in the third quarter of 2004. This includes desktops, notebooks and servers. India's share in the Asia Pacific region increased to 10.4 per cent from 9.2 per cent in the previous quarter.

Small and medium businesses and finance and banking continue to be the growth drivers. "While the corporate market continued to look healthy, top vendors are now seen to be aggressively targeting the premium end of the consumer segment," said Vinod Nair, analyst, computing systems, Gartner India, in the release.

Nair added, "Local entrants are expected to gain some market share in the short term with price-point advantages over branded players, though quality of after-sales service will be highly questionable."

A trend Nair spotted was shaping up due to some of the telecom service providers. He explains that they are now tapping avenues to bundle the desktop with Internet service making it available at affordable monthly plans.

If priced properly, he indicated that this will be a good move to increase desktop penetration and to grow the market in India. The release adds that from a market share perspective, Hewlett-Packard maintained top position with 14.3 percent followed by HCL with 12.1 percent IBM clocked 8.3 percent market share.

Meanwhile from an Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) perspective, 8.5 million units of PC were shipped in the third quarter 2004. This is an increase of 9.8 percent from the same period one year ago, equivalent to 3.1 percent sequentially.

All markets in the region performed positively, especially India, which grew by 35 per cent, compared to a year ago. Overall in Asia Pacific region, the professional market grew 15.7 per cent and the home market at 2.2 per cent Growth contributors in the professional market came from India, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam where seasonally it is the buying quarter.