'Subsidised Loans Can Push SME IT Adoption'

Personal computer sales rose 12 percent to 3.69 million (36.9 lakh) units in the first half this fiscal thanks to sustained demand from large and medium enterprises and households in small towns, an IT hardware industry lobby said today.

According to the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT), sales of desktops rose 12 percent to 2.91 million units, while notebook sales stood at 770,000 units, a growth of 13 percent.

The number of active Internet connections increased to 7.61 million in September 2008 as against 6.43 million a year ago. With this, the number of Internet users has exceeded 54 million in the country.

Internet penetration in the top 22 cities was 44 percent among businesses and 22 percent among households.

“Consumption in the large and medium enterprises has helped the PC market. The sales to households and small enterprises were less than expected. The overall consumption in the PC market was led by telecom, banking, education, BPO/IT enabled services and e-governance initiatives,” MAIT executive director Vinnie Mehta said.

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The lobby, however, gave a grim outlook for the remaining period of the fiscal and said sales were unlikely to grow during the period.

“Given the current macro-economic conditions and conservative buying sentiment in the market, PC sales are expected to remain at the same levels as in the last fiscal at 7.3 million units,” MAIT said in a statement.

The association also urged the governmental to support the industry. “It should be made mandatory for the public sector banks to earmark funds for easy and subsidised loans for purchase of IT products and solutions for SMEs (small and medium enterprises) and home consumers,” MAIT president S S Raman said.

“We need early resolution of issues related to the roll out of 3G and Wimax networks. These will not only enable consumption of front-end and back-end devices, but will also create a new economic paradigm through various applications, services and other avenues created through the network-multiplier effect,” Raman added. (IANS)