The Indian personal computer (PC) market including desktops, notebooks, and workstations declined by 6.6 per cent year-on-year to 13.9 million units in 2023, but HP India continued its growth and was the top PC maker with a 31.5 per cent market share. It was the number one player in desktop and notebook categories with 25.1 per cent and 33.8 per cent shares each. Again in the first quarter of this calendar year, HP dominated the market with a 30.1 per cent share, leading in commercial (32.4 per cent) and consumer (26.9 per cent) segments, as per market tracker IDC. Going forward, the company expects to get better numbers with the festive season kicking in next month and also its new range of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled PCs. In an interview with businessline, Ipsita Dasgupta, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, HP India, shares more. Edited excerpts: -
The PC business in India seems to favour you. With the festive season kicking-in, what are your expectations?
Yes, the festive season is kicking in, and refresh cycles are up for renewal. Generally, we are beginning to see a sort of consumer confidence and consumer uptick. Most business leaders, even outside of my industry, are talking about this uptick. So it’s a good time to be in India being an IT company. There is a need for investment in technology if you look at the sectors that are really growing and are important to the market right now. For instance, MSMEs and their need for increased digitisation. If you look at skilling, and the importance of solving skilling gaps... For the amount of investment that is coming into India in different industries, there is a significant need for IT hardware. And, on the consumer side, given India is so entrepreneurial, it’s a freelance-driven, creator-driven, startup-driven market. So, overall, globally, we had a very good second quarter, and even in India, we’ve started to see a pretty decent uptick.
You have recently launched AI-enabled PCs. What’s the share of your business and what growth opportunities do you see?
Right now, it’s very early to say because we’ve just launched the AIPC. It’s not the AI-enabled PC but the next generation. By the end of this year, we suspect that at least 10 per cent of all PC sales will be AIPCs and then in maybe two-three years, that will be almost half (50 per cent). As we’ve just launched the AIPC, we’re even seeing a pretty significant consumer traction on the AIPC, very quickly, off the blocks which is great to see. So, there will be a lot of products and in every segment, there will be AI -- both on the consumer and the commercial side. In a few years, almost a major share of PCs will be AI.
You talked about MSMEs and recently in the Budget also, there were a lot of announcements, a lot of packages for the MSME sector. So, what kind of opportunities do you see from there?
I think, first of all, MSMEs are ambitious. We have more than six million in the country. We already see the Budget driving support and opportunity. Now, the onus is on the business to drive this sector. From a technology point of view, digitisation and AI are two areas that MSMEs can really benefit from. They should be left behind in a digital divide where AI is being utilised by large enterprises. So, we’ve started a new sort of platform called HP Connect which is a Customer Experience Center. This is targeted at SMBs or MSMEs to specifically understand and talk about business needs of a particular SME in a particular vertical and then work with them to identify the right solutions because a lot of SMEs will not have CIOs or IT heads or IT management. So, we are working in the market to drive that kind of sort of consultative interaction with MSMEs. And we’re also engaging with state governments for skilling, education as a focus area.
But, what are you doing especially when it comes to cost? Are you working with local partners here to work towards affordability? What kind of partnerships are you looking at?
We’re always working on affordability. We have multiple affordability schemes and we continue to look for more. For example, in the financial inclusion area to say how do we get PCs in the hands of people. What are the best financing schemes. My boardroom spent a long time discussing how we get PCs into the hands of people and what is the difference it will create in three/six months/ in one year and three years for a child. So a big part of that is affordability. The second is accessibility; we need to get everyone, we need to go where people are to be able to drive the value and intent. So, getting past tier-I, II cities and getting into rural areas. All of these are sort of focus areas for us and we have been spending a lot of time on this.
There were reports of HP partnering with VVDN and Dixon for contract manufacturing. What’s the status right now?
We have nothing going on right now. We are always assessing and talking to partners. Currently, our plans are to expand, but we have not confirmed anything from a partnership perspective. We will be expanding definitely under the PLI 2.0. We will continue to manufacture through a partner. We manufacture through Flex since August 2020, and we manufacture a range of commercial laptops, desktops and all-in-ones (AIOs).
Tablet PC was one of the main instruments for learning during Covid by students. What are your plans when it comes to tablets...do you plan to launch some products as there are nil right now?
It’s not a focus area for us right now. During Covid, children who had to learn virtually from home all had phones, some of them even had tablets, but it was not productive for learning. So, I’m not sure that the distraction is necessary to go down a path because that exists as a use case.