Third Quarter PC sales cross 1 million units: MAIT

New Delhi, Apr 12 (UNI) Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT), the apex body representing the hardware, training and R&D services sectors of the IT industry in India, today said PC sales have crossed 1 million units in the country.

Sales of Notebooks and Peripherals witnessed robust growth. With strong macro economic conditions and upbeat market sentiment, sales in fourth quarter are expected to be buoyant, MAIT said in its Quarterly Industry Performance Review for October-December of FY2005-06.

Sales in FY 2005-06 are expected to cross 4.4 million units.

IT consumption in the country continued to be dominated by Industry verticals and corporate sectors such as Telecom, Banking&Financial Services, Manufacturing and IT-enabled services.

The consumption in these segments were largely driven by investments in software, solutions and other enterprise products.

Apart from these traditional sectors, high consumption was also witnessed in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), education, retail and other computer centric small enterprises.

In addition, the trend of increased PC purchase in households, smaller towns and cities as witnessed over the last few quarters, continued to be steadfast.

Aggressive pricing by the PC vendors has also helped improve the PC penetration, especially in the households and the SMEs segments.

As per the MAIT study, the Assembled PCs accounted for 38 per cent of the total PC sales in Q3 05-06, while the proportion of the branded PCs was 62 per cent.

MNC brands accounted for 34 per cent of the market while the Indian brands accounted for the rest 28 per cent.

In the Desktop market, in the Business Segment, it was primarily the Banks, Financial Institutions, Insurance companies, educational institutes, IT sector and IT related companies that were the lead consumers; while in the household segment, reduced prices coupled with applications for 'entertainment' and 'education' have fuelled the market.

The households market that witnessed a slight slow down in the earlier quarters has once again become vibrant.

Notebook sales touched 125,000 units recording 93 per cent y-o-y growth and 67 per cent sequential growth.

The high growth in Notebook consumption can be attributed to the drop in notebook prices and the additional benefit of mobility and space management.

With notebooks now being available at sub 30,000 prices, they are increasingly finding their way into the homes and SMEs.

The Server consumption in the first-quarter of 2005-06 was in excess of 144,000 units.

With increased investments in Corporates, especially manufacturing and retail, server consumption is likely to accelerate in the forthcoming quarters.

The printer market continued to be vibrant. Compared to the same period last year, consumption of Laser Printers grew by 91 per cent, Dot-matrix printer (DMP) by 2 per cent and that of Inkjet by 3 per cent.

The UPS market has shown substantial increase in demand.

Consumption of UPS witnessed an increase of 68 per cent on Y-o-Y basis and 135 per cent on sequential basis.

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