Indian ICT hardware market grew 24 percent in 2014-15

The overall size of Indian information and communication technology (ICT) hardware market grew 23.98 percent over the previous year in 2014-15 to stand at $15.87 billion, an annual industry performance report said here on Friday.

This segment includes personal computers (PC), desktops, phablets (screen size 5 inches and more), tablets (screen size greater than or equal to 7 inches), smartphones, servers and peripherals, said the report by Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT), the apex body representing India's IT hardware, training and research and development services sectors said.

Total PC sales (desktop computers and notebooks) stood at 10.62 million units, registering negative growth of 10 percent over the last fiscal, it said.

"Phones are driving all the growth but PC is showing degrowth. The only way to arrest this degrowth is to look at ways to increase PC penetration in Indian households," said MAIT president Amar Babu.

"One way is by enabling infrastructure, providing low-cost loans and discount vouchers for purchasing PCs. We also see a ray of hope for PC growth in future on account of some of Digital India initiatives which aims at having a digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens," he added.

Phablets made a huge growth of 527 percent over last year at 50.8 million sales and are expected to grow by around 65 percent in the next fiscal year, the report said.

"They are seeing fast emerging and information consumption, especially in the larger cities. Multi-utility of the product coupled with the ease of usage and handling makes it a preferred device over the other devices," it said.

"Government programmes have been instrumental in driving the growth of notebooks and also its decline. In a country where affordability is an issue, it is important for government to provide the additional impetus to the adoption of PCs, thereby, driving overall development of the society," said MAIT executive director Anwar Shirpurwala.