India PC shipments grew 30% in 2010; Fell 11% QoQ

Growth of notebook sales clearly outstripped that of desktops, growing 49% year on year compared to 14% rise in desktop PC sales in the last quarter of 2010. Between October and December 2010, overall PC sales reached 24.9 lakh units falling 11% quarter-on-quarter. Desktop PC sales accounted for 14.5 lakh units, while notebooks comprised the rest.

Dell and HP continue their battle for top market share with HP replacing Dell with 17.3% market share in sales of overall PC (notebooks and desktops combined) after two quarters of Dell leading in the country. Dell has 14.2% market share and Acer is at #3 with 11.5%. Notebooks led HP to the top position, with its market share reaching 26.2% in the segment followed by Dell and Acer.

The desktop PC market now sees HP and HCL in a tie with HP at 10.86% and HCL at 10.78% followed by Acer.

"High inflation and low industrial growth rates failed to dampen the PC market in the 4th quarter of calendar year 2010. As the market came off the traditional peak, it was still able to return an impressive year-on-year growth, indicating the inherent strength of consumer and commercial demand", stated Anirban Banerjee, Associate Vice President, Research, IDC India.

"2010 has been an impressive year of recovery for the India PC market after a dismal 2009. While consumers have been the main architects of this recovery, it has been ably supported by renewed buying sentiment displayed by the SMB and government segments", stated Sumanta Mukherjee, Lead PC Analyst, IDC India. "The very large business and large business space experienced a healthy demand for PCs as the global economy started stabilizing, stimulated by the revival of the IT-ITeS vertical among others. This trend triggered a fresh round of investments in IT infrastructure", he added.

In the netbook category, Intel can be expected to face the heat. According to Mukherjee, "Sales of Atom processor-based mini notebook PCs are likely to come under increasing pressure, as competitive offerings of rivals start becoming available in March 2011. Emergence of Media Tablets will also impact this category in the long run."

IDC clarifies that all numbers reported are according to "unit shipments", which is the number of PCs shipped by a vendor to all distribution channels or directly to end-users. Units are counted as they leave the vendor and are not double counted in the case of OEM relationships in which systems are shipped twice. IDC does not track the number of PCs brought on their person by passengers landing on Indian soil from overseas destinations. These are, therefore, not part of the IDC numbers reported here.