India PC sales up 8% to 3.24 mn units

Driven by large commercial orders and higher laptop sales, the PC market in India grew about 8% in July-September quarter to 3.2 million units.

 

However, on sequential basis, the market saw a fall.

 

According to research firm Gartner, the Indian PC market grew 7.9% driven by large government orders and higher laptop sales in the third quarter of the calender year, while IDC pegged the growth at 8.3% in the same period on the back of higher commercial volumes from education projects.

 

"July and August were noted to be upbeat as lower tier channels stocked up owing to exchange rate pressures. However, excess stock mixed with poor end user demand weakened channel buying in September," IDC Market Analyst Manish Yadav said.

 

Despite constrained spending, back-to-school season and festive demand starting from Onam drove pockets of investment amongst consumers, particularly around portable PCs, he added.

 

"Consumers accounted for 40% of total PC sales in the third quarter of 2013 compared to 47% in the third quarter of 2012," Gartner Principal Research Analyst Vishal Tripathi said.

 

He added that despite the festive season and availability of various end-user schemes on PCs, the market was impacted by high inflation and global economic uncertainty.

 

IDC said education projects in states like Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and a much-delayed spending in the year from the banking, financial services and insurance segment have largely skewed the overall growth in Q3 towards commercial segment.

 

According to Gartner, white boxes (including parallel imports), which accounted for 40% of the overall desktop market, declined 26% in Q3 2013 compared to the same period last year.

 

On the other hand, mobile PC sales grew 22% year- on-year, helping drive overall market growth.

 

HP was the market leader with over 32% market share, followed by Lenovo, Dell and Acer.

 

"Vendors continued to receive a boost in shipments as part of a large education project in UP. Also, their ability to maintain better pricing against competition tied with aggressive marketing campaigns on both desktops and portable PCs, helped them scale up their dominance in the India PC market," IDC Research Manager Kiran Kumar said.

 

IDC expects Q4 to crumble because seasonality and price hike may disrupt PC buying in the quarter ending December.

 

"Additionally, elections in Delhi, civil issues in the state of Andhra Pradesh are further expected to impact the overall buying in some of these larger states," Yadav said.