The overall India PC market remained flat at 7.98 million during 2008 against 8.06 million in 2007, according to IDC. Desktop shipments dropped 10.1 per cent, while notebook PC shipments recorded a growth of 31.5 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

When asked if Acer would see a growth during 2009, Mr Rajendran said the company expects to maintain 2008 numbers or even post a small growth. “We are hoping there will not be a negative growth,” he added.

Acer recently launched a Nettop or a small form factor computer. While the product is anchored around the Internet, it can perform basic computational tasks, the company said. Acer launched its netbook in India in August last year.

Tier II and III towns would be the focus area for Nettop sales, and first time buyers, in addition to the education and government sectors would be the targeted customer segment, the company said.

“India has very low PC penetration of about 3.5 per cent compared to the world average of 12.5 per cent, which gives a lot of opportunity to grow sales,” said Mr Rajendran.

Mr Rajendran said the nettop category would be the growth engine for the desktop segment, which has been losing share to notebooks. It would be a strong incremental growth though there would be some overlap, he added.