PC shipments grew 20% in Q3: Gartner

With home markets expanding to 26.4 per cent of the total personal computer (PC) sales, PC shipments in India reached over 2.2 million units in the third quarter of 2007. An increase of 19.7 per cent over the same period in 2006, according to Gartner.

India's mobile PC (laptop) sales grew 99.4 per cent to nearly half a million in the third quarter of 2007.

Driven by large brands such as HP, HCL, Lenovo and Acer, and supported by the small and medium enterprises segment, desktop PC shipments grew 7.8 per cent to 1.72 million. This is the highest reported growth in the last three quarters.

The slow down of the desk-based PC market can be attributed to negative growth of the white box (assembled) segment, which has been shrinking due to the marketing onslaught of the large local and multinational PC vendors and the home market's growing preference for mobile PCs over desk-based PCs.

Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst for Gartner's client computing group said, "The third quarter usually coincides with the festival buying season in India - the biggest consumer spending period.

However, this year in spite of the festival buying season falling in Q4, consumer spending has not followed the conventional pattern, proof of which has been the aggressive retail sales of mobile PCs in the third quarter itself."

He also noted that tier-II and III home segment, which hitherto were almost exclusively buying desk"�based PCs are now also opting for mobile PCs.