High inflation and economic uncertainty pushed down sales of desktops and laptops in the country by 5.9 per cent to nearly 2.9 million units in the third quarter of 2012 over the same period last year, research firm Gartner said on Wednesday.

The combined desk-based and mobile PC market in India totalled nearly 3.15 million units in the third quarter of 2011, Gartner said in a statement.

“Consumers accounted for 47 per cent of total PC sales in the third quarter of 2012 compared to 55 per cent in the third quarter of 2011,” Gartner Principal Research Analyst, Vishal Tripathi said.

This emphasises the fact that despite the festive season and availability of various end user schemes on PCs, the market was impacted by high inflation, global economic uncertainty and limited share of wallet as consumers preferred to spend on other consumer durables, he added.

White boxes (including parallel import), which accounted for 47 per cent of the overall desktop market, declined 35 per cent in Q3 of 2012 compared to the same period last year.

Mobile PCs, with a 23 per cent year—on—year increase, helped drive overall market growth.

Gartner said the execution of the Tamil Nadu government order, and a strong increase in the consumer space, helped Lenovo retain the number one position with 17 per cent market share in the reported quarter.

Acer (ranked number two) grew its share to 15.7 per cent in the said quarter from 10.8 per cent in Q3 of 2011, while HP increased its share to 15.5 per cent from 13.3 per cent.

Dell and HCL, fourth and fifth in the tally, saw market share declining to 12.4 per cent (from 15 per cent) and 3.4 per cent (from 5.6 per cent), respectively.

Gartner said multinational brands contributed to more than half of the total PC shipments in the first quarter of 2012, with shipments from Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo representing 60.6 per cent of the market.

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