The Hindu Business Line : PC sales up 35 pc in April-June: Gartner

THE Indian PC market, including desktops, notebooks and servers, grew by 34.6 per cent during the second quarter of 2004, said IT analyst firm Gartner on Thursday. Over 7.6 lakh units were shipped in Q2 during which India garnered a 9.23 per cent market share in the Asia Pacific region, Gartner said in a press release.

"Healthy economic conditions coupled with increase in run-rate business resulted in a good second quarter this year," said Mr Vinod Nair, analyst - computing systems, Gartner India.

While the election quarter and expectation of further reduction in prices due to the Union Budget caused a marginal halt in desktop purchases during the last two weeks in June, it did not really impact the overall upward trend in purchases, Mr Nair said.

Consumer, education and small and medium business contributed to a large part of the shipment this quarter, Gartner said. Desktops registered 32 per cent growth while notebooks grew steadily at 123 per cent and constituted 5 per cent of total shipments during the quarter, the release said.

The narrowing price differential between desktops and notebooks has catalysed notebook purchases within the small and medium business segment.

Hewlett-Packard maintained the top position with 14.9 per cent market share (9.1 per cent in the second quarter of 2003) followed by HCL with 11.9 per cent (8.8 per cent) while IBM increased its share to 7.8 per cent (6.6 per cent). Dell Inc and Acer increased their share marginally to 3.5 per cent (3.4 per cent) and 3.3 per cent (2.5) respectively. However, the share of other vendors has come down to 58.6 per cent from 69.6 per cent in Q2 last year.

Meanwhile, the Asia Pacific PC market shipments in the second quarter of 2004 increased by 16.5 per cent compared to a year ago. China, India and Thailand remained the key engine of growth in the region with growth rates exceeding 30 per cent. PC shipments from the three countries accounted for 60 per cent of shipments from the region, the release said.