PC Sales Plummet By 22.7% In 4Q11

In Q4 2011, India PC market recorded its lowest shipments in the last six quarters, disrupted largely by the supply shortage and subsequent price inflation of the Hard disk drives. The India PC market shipments for Q4 2011 (October – December) stood at 2.39 million units i.e. a sequential drop of 22.7 percent over the previous quarter even as the overall year on year decline was noted to be at 3.8 percent.

“The HDD scenario posed an immense challenge starting October when the consumer & SEB growth was the strongest. The non-branded PC market was reduced to less than 2/3rd of its size as HDDs were available in the market with a 100 percent price increment, coupled with the dollar surge, which further wiped off any chances of carrying the momentum forward in the 3 months of Q4 2011,” said Kiran Kumar, Sr. Analyst at IDC.

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Despite a slowdown, Dell maintained its market leadership with a 16.4 percent market share in Q4 2011. Lenovo secured the second spot with its success in the enterprise and consumer space. “Strong channel focus coupled with expanding reach and their aggressive marketing efforts ensured Lenovo’s success in the India PC market” comments Kiran. While de-prioritisation of conventional desktops backed by a focus on profitable growth put HP in the third spot in Q4 2011.

IDC estimates that a total of 10.48 million PCs have been shipped in CY 2011 (January – December), which reflects a 6 percent year-on-year growth over the previous year. While Desktops have registered a year-on-year decline of 4.4 percent, Portables witnessed a stirring growth of 22.9 percent over the same period. “Desktops have been on the road to oblivion for a few years now in the U.S and Western European markets; the rest of the world just seems to be catching up. We definitely notice a glaring shift in the spending patterns of consumers. A recent IDC ConsumerScape survey further suggests more consumers are twice as likely to buy a Laptop, Netbook or a Media Tablet (likes of iPad) rather than a traditional desktop computer.” adds Kiran.

Dollar surge and weakened global growth is reinforcing Indian markets to remain more cautious around their spending on IT products/ services, resulting in an evident slow down across businesses. Further, the price hike in the hard disk drives are here to stay. Hence, IDC expects the growth to remain subdued in the subsequent quarter too.

Dr. Adwaita Menon, Associate Research Director, IDC commented, “Having said that, we are still looking at a double-digit growth for CY 2012 as commoditisation is helping consumer PC market to spread into tier III and tier IV cities because of increase in buying power and education level across states. Also, as noted in the recent past, Government initiatives such as 5 year e-governance programme, ambitious UID project, coupled with poll manifestos such as the announcement of Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu for 9,12,000 laptops across the state, have been powering the adoption from the front. With similar announcements made in other states for the recently contested polls, we only expect the penetration of PCs to grow in the future.”