Computer makers will increase price of laptops and tablets by 8-10 per cent from July onwards due to decline in rupee against the dollar.

Companies such as Lenovo, HCL Infosystems and Dell said they will pass on the impact of rupee depreciation to consumers in the next couple of weeks.

“The dollar value going up to Rs 58-59 from the early fairly stable rate of around Rs 54.5, and given the margin situation in the PC industry, we expect the end customer prices to go up,” P. Krishnakumar, Executive Director and General Manager — Consumer and Small Business, Dell India, told Business Line .

Lenovo India also said it would be increasing the prices over the next couple of weeks.

“The increase will be across all products and expect it to be 5-8 per cent. We are working on details right now,” Amar Babu, Managing Director, Lenovo India said.

“In this scenario, we have decided to hike the prices of our computing range of products, including tablets, consumer laptops and desktops, commercial desktops, servers, storage, networking and office automation products by 8-10 per cent effective July 1,” Rothin Bhattacharyya, Executive Vice-President - Marketing, Strategy, Corporate Development, HCL Infosystems, said.

‘Keenly watching’

Acer India, Samsung and Hewlett Packard India are also working on the details and closely watching the situation and will take the final decision on new pricing of the products next week.

“HP has already increased prices of few products by 10 per cent couple of days back and will further increase prices of other products by 8-10 per cent by July 1,” Vinay Awasthi, Senior Director - Product And Marketing - Personal Systems Group, HP India, said.

Indrajit Sabharwal, Managing Director, Simmtronics Semiconductors, said, “Brands are also dependent upon import of various component or products, Thus, we may have to increase the price in due course of time if the rupee keeps on falling.”

The situation of the industry, especially the IT hardware, becomes critical whenever the value of rupee goes down, mainly because more than 85 per cent of the entire industry is import dependent. According to companies, the price increase may also impact the sales of the products.

“But, what can be done? When the water level rises, one has to the needful,” S Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India, said.

According to analysts, most consumers would put off buying.

“The industry is already down and they could not increase prices of the products because vendors are playing in a thin margin for a long time. The price increase happens only when dollar rate is high,” Sumanta Mukherjee, Lead Analyst, CyberMedia Research, said.

According to Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT), losses are accumulating, causing cash flow challenges and blocking investments and consumers who are already feeling the pressure of high price would have to pay more for their desired electronics products. “This is not new and the country was faced with a similar situation last year as well and hence we have always recommended for implementation of Exchange Rate Variation (ERV) clause as mentioned in the Manual on Policies and Procedures for purchase of Goods,” Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director of MAIT, said.

ERV implementation

The implementation of ERV would allow a company to quote a proper exchange rate on the date of tender release to avoid impact of component price escalation, he said.

“The Government can also extend abatement concession to IT hardware devices that are mainly for end consumers,” he added. According to research firm IDC, the overall India PC market stood at 11 million units in 2012, a growth of 3.5 per cent over calendar year 2011.

> ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in

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