As phablets and smartphones have seen a growth of 527 per cent and 33 per cent respectively, the personal computers (PCs) have witnessed a slump in the market for the first time in the country. It has declined for over 10 per cent to 10.6 million units in the country, according to a report released by industry body MAIT-IMRB on Friday.
Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT) and International Market Research Bureau (IMRB) have jointly announced the findings of its annual industry performance review for the financial year 2014-15. According to the report, the overall size of Indian ICT hardware market stands at $15.87 billion, showing a growth of 23.98 per cent over the previous year.
This report has shown a phenomenal growth for phablets or smartphones with screen size equal to or greater than 5-inch and smartphones mainly because of their being low cost and big screen phones while PC sales (desktop computers and notebooks) registered a negative growth. Moreover, Server segment grew by 30 per cent and Tablet has witnessed a slight growth of 4 per cent compared to the huge growth in the last three years.
Commenting on the findings, President of MAIT, Amar Babu said, "Phones are driving all the growth but PC is showing de-growth. The only way to arrest this de-growth is to look at ways to increase PC penetration in Indian households. One way is by enabling infrastructure, providing low-cost loans and discount vouchers for purchasing PCs."
"We also see a ray of hope for PC growth in future on account of some Digital India initiatives which aims at having a digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand and digital empowerment of citizens," he further added.
Interestingly, notebook sales that had been driving growth for the PC segment in India declined 15 per cent to 5.8 million units. Desktop market fell four per cent to 4.7 million units in 2014-15.
"The study is based on over 40,000 face-to-face interviews with end-users spread over 35 cities, with data projected to the 'All India Urban market' and 41 SCRs (socio economic regions) to estimate the 'All India Rural market'. It is involved data collection after the 'last mile' that the product travels, i.e. from the premise where the product is finally installed," said International, Business & Industrial Research Division's (IMRB) Vice President, Biswapriya Bhattacharjee .