The Indian personal computer market suffered a setback in 2014, with overall PC shipment shrinking 16.5% as against last year to 9.6 million units.
The shipments took a beating in the run up to the general elections in May, but gained momentum from June because of innovative pricing by vendors, festive buying and pent-up demand, said research firm IDC.
Despite an uptick in demand, PC shipment for the quarter ended December 31 stood at 2.3 million units, a sequential drop of 14.6%, but a year-on-year growth of 13.3% over the corresponding period in 2013.
According to the report, the consumer PC market grew 1.7% year-on-year to 4.9 million units in 2014. “Continuing from 2013, consumer sentiments remained frail until elections. However, stable government in the Centre aided hopes on reforms and economic progress boosting overall end-user confidence. Also, subsiding inflation and rapid growth of online trade coupled with the introduction of sub $400 devices created just the right buzz for PC business in 2014,” said Kiran Kumar, research manager, IDC.
The commercial PC market clocked 4.7 million units in 2014, a year-on-year drop of 29.6% over 2013. “The primary reason for the plunge was that barring fulfilment for ELCOT Phase III, the contribution of large education projects was not exciting in 2014 as compared to 2013.
Also, enterprise users have been cautiously optimistic by pinning their hopes on the direction of reforms which is still quite ambiguous. This is with the exception of BFSI, where IT spending returned to a rapid surge in 2014 for both capacity expansion and hardware refresh,” said Manish Yadav, market analyst, IDC.
HP retained its top spot with a market share of 25.6%. Dell emerged as a resurgent force, posting a 9% y-o-y growth and ending 2014 with a 22.1% market share. Lenovo retained the third spot with a market share of 15.8%.