Phablet sales have seen a 527 per cent growth, while total PC sales at have fallen 10 per cent over the last fiscal, a report by Manufacturers’ Association of Information Technologies (MAIT), said on Friday.
The overall size of Indian ICT Hardware market stands at $15.87 billion, registering a growth of 23.98 per cent over the previous year, according to the Annual Industry Performance Review for the financial year 2014-15. This segment includes PCs, Desktops, Phablets (Screen size 5 inch and more), tablets (screen size greater than or equal to 7 inch), smartphones, servers, and peripherals.
Total PC sales (desktop computers and notebooks) stood at 1.06 crore units in 2014-15 against 1.18 crore units in 2013-14. Smartphone sales stood at 6.96 crore, an increase of 33 per cent against 5.24 crore last year.
Amar Babu, President of MAIT, said, “Phones are driving all the growth but PC is showing a fall. The only way to arrest this is to look at ways to increase PC penetration in Indian households. One way is by enabling infrastructure, providing low-cost loans and discount vouchers for purchasing PCs. We also see a ray of hope on account of some of Digital India initiatives.”
Phablets is expected to grow by around 65 per cent in the next fiscal year. Multi-utility of the product coupled with the ease of usage and handling makes it a preferred device over the other devices, the report added.
Tablet PC has grown 4 per cent in sales for 2014-15 at 34.8 lakh against 33.5 lakh in 2013-14, which indicates the decline of the category even before it established itself. The market is expected to fall 16 per cent 2015-16 owing to the consumers moving to adoption of higher screen size smartphone and phablets with voice calling facility.
The study is based on over 42,000 face-to-face interviews with end-users spread over 35 cities with data projected to the ‘All India Urban market’ and 41 socio economic regions to estimate the ‘All India Rural market’.