India’s PC market grew by more than 22 percent in the quarter ended June 30 compared to the same quarter last year, with Hewlett-Packard Co. the market leader in all segments, according to data released Tuesday by research firm IDC (India) Ltd. The total number of shipments in the quarter were 1.53 million.
Notebook PC shipments grew the fastest at 73 percent during the quarter, and are expected to corner a 40 percent share of the overall PC market by 2010. In contrast, desktop PC shipments grew by 11.3 percent in the same quarter, IDC said.
HP had a 22.2 percent share of the overall PC market by unit shipments, followed by Indian vendor HCL Infosystems Ltd. with 12.8 percent, and Lenovo Group Ltd. at 10.3 percent. In desktop PCs, HP had a 16.7 percent share, followed by HCL and Lenovo in second and third place. In notebook PCs, HP had a 40.4 percent share of the market, followed by Lenovo and Dell Inc. in second and third place, IDC said.
The consumer notebook segment increased its share in the quarter to 32 percent of the total notebook PC shipments.
Multinational PC makers have set up manufacturing facilities in India to cut costs and delivery time. Dell’s facility in Chennai in south India started rolling out products for the Indian market in July.
To cut freight costs and reduce delivery time, HP makes its PCs at manufacturing facilities at Bangalore in south India and in Uttaranchal in the northern part of the country.
Lenovo also announced this year that it was setting up a second facility in India. The factory in Baddi in northern India will supplement a southern India facility that became part of Lenovo after its acquisition of IBM Corp.’s PC business in 2005. Unbranded PCs, assembled by small out-of-garage operations, however continue to have a 45 percent share of the Indian PC market, according to estimates by Intel Corp.
These PCs, also known as “white boxes,” will continue to have a significant share of PC sales in India, said Ravichandran R., Intel’s director of sales for southern Asia, in a recent interview. Unbranded PC makers are popular in small cities and towns because of the low-cost of their products, he said.
They are seen by customers as friendly neighborhood suppliers, who install and maintain the PCs, he added.
In the notebook PC segment, branded products dominate, because the supplier base for components required for assembling notebooks is not yet established in India, according to Intel.
