PC shipments in India slip 17% to 1.8 mn units in Q1: IDC

The traditional PC market in India declined by 16.7 per cent year-on-year at 1.8 million units in March 2020 quarter, according to research firm IDC.

The shipment in January-March 2019 period was at about 2.1 million units, IDC said in a statement.

This decline was registered across all product categories and can be attributed largely to the supply issues faced by the vendors due to COVID-19, which impacted the manufacturing and logistics arms of vendors in China, it added.

Traditional PC market comprises desktops,notebooks and workstations.

The nationwide lockdown from the second half of March aggravated the problems further for PC vendors since it resulted in a complete halt of retail and commercial orders, IDC noted.

Notebooks category recorded a 16.8 per cent decline due to significant y-o-y contractions in the consumer and education segments.

However, many businesses increased their orders for notebooks, which resulted in a 7.1 per cent y-o-y increase for the enterprise segment. The growth would have been even higher, if not for supply constraints which affected the industry in February and March and caused some of the orders to be delayed until the second quarter.

The desktop category had relatively better inventory since most of it is assembled in India but saw a decline in demand and contracted 15.9 per cent y-o-y in the first quarter of 2020, IDC said.

Enterprises across all segments seem to be preferring notebooks over desktops during the current scenario of work-from-home during the lockdown, IDC India Market Analyst, PC Devices aid Bharath Shenoy said.

"As companies and employees try to adjust to remote working requirements, the immediate task is to make the workforce functional with minimal losses in productivity. Hence, the demand for notebooks in the enterprise segment is expected to remain strong in the coming quarters," he added.

HP retained the top position in the overall PC market with a share of 28.2 per cent in the January-March quarter, followed by Dell Technologies (25.9 per cent) and Lenovo (20 per cent).

Jaipal Singh, associate research manager (client devices) at IDC India, said there has been a huge uptake in learning and working from home in India during the countrywide shutdown as "students, parents, working executives, and companies come to terms with the new reality during this period".

"On the other hand, small and medium businesses are significantly impacted because of the shutdown with buying trend expected to remain low throughout the year. Thus, vendors must be ready to capture these pockets of growth in the next few quarters to offset the sluggish demand," he added.

This will bring changes in the procurement pattern of PCs going forward with more companies preferring mobility and endpoint security among the key requirements in their next purchases, he said adding that vendors should prioritise these features in their new offerings.