Indian PC market crosses major milestone

Bangalore, Aug 29: The Indian PC market has crossed yet another milestone by shipping as many as 2,19,000 notebook PCs in a single quarter.

During the second quarter ended June 30 last, the Indian Client PC market witnessed a 19 per cent year-on-year (YoY) growth to reach 1.25 million units, according to IDC's India Quarterly PC Market Tracker.

''While the quarter witnessed sluggishness in the desktop PC market, with a sequential decline of five per cent, notebook PC shipments continued to expand. This arose as notebooks are increasingly being used by the increasingly mobile workforce to be productive and respond in a competitive environment,'' Mr Piyush Pushkal, Senior Market Analyst, PC Research, IDC India, said in a release here.

In the overall PC market, the top three rankings remained unchanged - HP retained the top spot with a market share of 20 per cent, followed by HCL at 14 per cent, and Lenovo at 10 per cent in terms of unit shipments.

In terms of total desktop PC shipments, HP led the market in the second quarter, followed by HCL and Lenovo. In terms of total notebook PC shipments HP was the top vendor.

A 113 per cent YoY growth (2Q 2006 over 1Q 2006) in notebook PC shipments was witnessed due to aggressive channel and end-user promotions from vendors such as HP, Toshiba, Lenovo and Dell, with a buoyant buying sentiment in the small and medium business segments, seeing a shipment growth of 12 per cent sequentially. (Q2 2006 over Q1 2006) The notebook PC market took another great leap in India during second quarter of 2006 crossing the two-lakh shipments per quarter mark for the first time. The consumer notebook PC category witnessed a 16 per cent sequential growth and 438 per cent YoY growth.

Coupled with aggressive marketing by vendors, the SMB segment witnessed a massive growth of 102 per cent YoY (2Q 2006 over 2Q 2005) in notebook PC shipments.

UNI