With rise in disposable income and job stability, India's computer sales is projected to grow at 35 per cent in FY12, more than double the pace in previous year, according to hardware association MAIT.
As per its latest estimates, the sales of personal computers — desktops, notebooks and netbooks combined —– are expected to cross 12.6 million units during 2011-12. There is an important rider to achieving this target, though. The study only gauges the pent-up demand in India's market, that is, the keenness by households and enterprises to buy PCs, and MAIT admits that a lot hinges on factors like broadband penetration, interest rates and inflation influencing SEC B and C buying, as also the cascading impact of the global uncertainty. Any adverse incident could act as a spoiler, it cautions.
For the year ended March 2011, the total PC sales rose 16 per cent to 9.31 million units. The the notebooks and netbook sales growth continued to outpace the desktop segment. The desktop sales stood at 6.03 million (60.3 lakh) units, a growth of 9 per cent. On the other hand, notebooks and netbooks together recorded a consumption of 3.28 million units, about 31 per cent higher than the previous fiscal.
That said, FY11 notebook growth rate is lower than previous fiscal (the segment had grown 61 per cent in FY10).
“…Sales have really picked up across all product segments thanks to the stable economic growth and the increase in disposable income despite inflation,” Mr Sandeep Nair, President of MAIT said on the FY11 performance of the hardware segment. The press release from MAIT further said that PC unit sales in FY12 would be driven by “conditions of increasing mobility among consumers”.
During 2010-11, the laptop sales growth was primarily driven by household purchases, which accounted for about 57 per cent of the total notebook sales and registered a growth of 32 per cent. The notebook sales among establishments grew 27 per cent. The netbook sales crossed the 0.3 million unit mark for the first time, notching a growth of 80 per cent over last year. Again, the netbook purchases were largely driven by the households which accounted for almost three-fourths of the total sales in this space during 2010-11.
Notably, for the first time, the household and establishment buyers contributed equally, that is 50 per cent to the total desktop sales in FY11. Households contribution to the desktop market increased to 50 per cent from about a 42 per cent during the previous year, the statement revealed..
Sales of servers registered a decline of 14 per cent in FY11 as the contribution of purchases from medium sized establishments fell from 42 per cent to 15 per cent. However, MAIT did not elaborate on what caused this sharp fall.
The printer sales grew 15 per cent during 2010-11 to 2.87 million units, led by laser printer and inkjet printer purchases. Dot-matrix printer sales registered a decline. The sales in this segment at 0.35 million declined by 3 per cent.
The number of active ‘Internet entities' crossed the 13 million mark in March 2011, a growth of 36 per cent over the year-ago period. MAIT defines Internet entities as establishments/individuals with Internet connection. An entity could house multiple users.
Interestingly, the optimistic forecast by MAIT for the India PC market comes on a day when global research firm Gartner has lowered its earlier projections for worldwide PC shipments for 2011 and 2012. Gartner has said that global the PC shipments may slow to 3.8 per cent growth in 2011 and 10.9 per cent growth in 2012.