PC market grows by 25% y-o-y in Q3: IDC

Buoyed by the need for mobility, the Indian notebook PC market grew almost 85% to cross the 500,000 shipments mark in a single quarter, according to IDC's India Quarterly PC Tracker, Q3 2007. During Q3 2007 (third quarter), the overall India client personal computer (notebooks and desktop combined) market grew 25.1% year-on-year in terms of unit shipments to 1.8 million. For the same period (3Q 2007 over 3Q 2006), desktop PC shipments showed a growth of 10.9%.

During the quarter, notebook PC shipments to the home and small office segments grew by 166% year-on-year, contributing almost 43% of total notebook shipments. The next largest contributors to this trend were the enterprise and education segments. The study further revealed, that in the January-September 2007 period, a total of 4.81 million client PCs were sold. Of which 3.6 million were desktops and 1.21 million laptops. In the 12-month period ended December 2006, a total of 5.4 million PCs were sold comprising 4.42 million desktops and 980,000 lakh laptops, the study noted.

North India continued to dominate India notebook PC shipments by region, showing a year-on-year growth of 104% to contribute 31.8% to the national total. Southern India witnessed a 80% growth, while contributing 30.2%. Western and Eastern parts of India saw a 77% and 70% rise respectively. While Western India now contributes 28.1 to the national total.

Kapil Dev Singh, country manager, IDC India, said: "Portability, rather than mobility has emerged as the 'Number 1' driver for the sustained growth in notebook PC shipments in India. Given the choice of portability, flexibility and ease of use and the narrowing of the price-performance gap that once existed between portables and desktops, consumers are almost overwhelmingly inclined to buy notebook PCs."

In the overall client PC (notebooks and desktops combined) market the rankings remained unchanged. HP retained the top spot with a market share of 21.6 %, followed by HCL at 12.3 %, and Lenovo at 10.3 %, in terms of unit shipments during the third quarter of calendar year 2007 (3Q 2007).

Sanjit Sinha, associate VP, research, IDC India said: "In an emerging market like India there still exist many untapped pockets of opportunity for desktops, as shown by the recent signs of revival of this market. In 3Q 2007 consumer desktop PC shipments recorded a 10.5% year-on-year (3Q 2007 over 3Q 2006) growth as compared to a 1% year-on-year decline in shipments recorded during the previous quarter (2Q 2007 over 2Q 2006). The desktop market will aim to sustain market momentum by reaching out to the untapped small and medium business (SMB) enterprises, e-Governance projects and consumer infrastructure builds up in C, D and E class cities."