Mobile drives India PC market
India's PC market expands 2.5 percent in the second quarter over the previous quarter, where growth is driven by strong showing from mobile PCs, according to new data from Gartner.
In a report released Wednesday, the research firm said the overall desktop and mobile PC market in India reached 2.5 million in unit shipment in second quarter 2011. The mobile PC grew 17 percent year-on-year.
Vishal Tripathi, Gartner's principal research analyst, noted that consumer demand had slowed due to various economic factors such as rising interest rates and high inflation cost. These concerns remained with the recent hike in commodity pricing such as fuel and food items, he added.
Nonethless, he said in the report that the market is expected to perform "far better" in the third quarter with the arrival of the festive season which translates to buying.
Dell remained the top PC vendor in India with 16.7 percent market share in the second quarter. Acer elbowed Hewlett-Packard off from second position with 12.1 percent market share. Dropping to third, HP was the only major multinational vendor which did not have a double-digit growth in PC shipments, said Gartner. The company's market share in the quarter was 11.2 percent.
Chinese PC maker Lenovo ranked in at fourth position with 10.4 percent market share, while HCL, the only Indian vendor in the top 5 list grabbed 6.6 percent market share.
All-in-one PCs see growth
In a separate statement, GfK Asia reported that the all-in-one PC segment helped sustain the growth of the desktop PC market in South East Asia, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Among the 800,000 units of desktop sold in the region in the first half of 2011, 44,000 units were all-in-one PCs, said GfK. This represented a 10 percent volume growth compared to the same period in 2010, and a 100 percent growth in volume compared to 2009.
According to GfK, Thailand was the biggest market for such PCs in the region, with 22,000 units sold in the country.
In the report, Gerard Tan, Gfk Asia's regional account director for IT, said: "The popularity of all-in-one desktop computers has given rise to lower price points which have directly been fuelling consumer demand." He added that the average selling price of an all-in-one PC dropped from US$1,250 in 2009 to US$1,000 today.
Tan added that with the increasing affordability of all-in-one PCs and most models coming with 21-inch and above display screens, these systems were an attractive alternative over other form factors.