The India traditional PC market has witnessed a 16.7 per cent year-over-year (YoY) decline in the first quarter of 2020 with a total of 1.8 million shipments, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker.
The traditional PC market includes desktops, notebooks, and workstation.
“This decline was registered across all product categories and can be attributed largely to the supply issues faced by the vendors due to Covid-19, which impacted the manufacturing and logistics arms of vendors in China,” the report said.
The nation-wide lockdown announced back in March has further added to the decline in the market due to a complete halt of retail and commercial orders.
The Notebooks market recorded a 16.8 per cent YoY decline in the consumer and education segments. However, for the private sector, there was a 7.1 per cent YoY growth owing to businesses offering notebooks for employees in advance as they had been mandated to work from home.
“The growth would have been even higher, if not for supply constraints which affected the industry in February and March and caused some of the orders to be delayed until Q2FY’20,” it said.
As most desktops are assembled in India, it had a relatively better inventory. However, it recorded a decline in demand and an overall fall of 15.9 per cent YoY in Q1FY’20.
“Enterprises across all segments seem to be preferring notebooks over desktops during the current scenario of work from home under the lockdown,” said Bharath Shenoy , Market Analyst, PC Devices, IDC India. “As companies and employees try to adjust to remote working requirements, the immediate task is to make the workforce functional with minimal losses in productivity. Hence, the demand for notebooks in the enterprise segment is expected to remain strong in the coming quarters.”
The top players
The traditional PC market was led by HP Inc with a market share of 28.2 per cent in Q120, followed by Dell Technologies and Lenovo.
HP despite maintaining its top position, struggled with supplies of desktops witnessing a 16.4 per cent YoY decline in total shipments. Dell witnessed a 16.5 per cent decline in its overall shipments, while Lenovo finished the quarter declining 33.6 per cent YoY.
The way ahead
The market has been majorly impacted with more people being mandated to work from home and study from home amid lockdown. Vendors can target these segments in the future to make up for the sluggish demand in the first quarter.
Jaipal Singh , Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India said, “There has been a huge uptake in learning and working from home in India during this countrywide shutdown as students, parents, working executives, and companies come to terms with the new reality during this period. On the other hand, small and medium businesses are significantly impacted because of the shutdown with buying trend expected to remain low throughout the year. Thus, vendors must be ready to capture these pockets of growth in the next few quarters to offset the sluggish demand.”
“Additionally, this will bring changes in the procurement pattern of PCs going forward with more companies preferring mobility and endpoint security among the key requirements in their next purchases. Vendors should prioritize these features in their new offerings,” he further added.