Gray market PCs dominate Indian PC market

Sales of gray market PC are outstripping sales of branded PCs two-to-one.

NEW DELHI, 13 JUL 2000 (Asia Pulse) - Riding on the Internet boom, local brands and the gray market continued to dominate the Indian Personal computer (PC) scene with their combined share increasing to 58% of the total 1.4 million units sold in 1999-2000.

Their contribution to total PC sales during 1998-99 was 53%. At the same time the share of the branded Indian PCs came down to 19% from 25% in 1998-99, while that of multinational company brands increased to 23% from 22% in 1998-99," according to an annual IT industry performance review by the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT).

The review said sales of desktop PC market doubled from 0.2 million units in 1998-99 to 0.4 million units last year and projected that the total market would cross the 1.9 million unit mark in 2000-01. "Overall annual PC shipments in terms of units grew 37 per cent to 1.4 million in 1999-2000 while in value terms the market increased by 13% Rs 48.74 billion (US$1.09 billion)," the MAIT survey, conducted by IMRB across 16 cities in India, said.

"PC shipments to the business segment grew to 0.15 million units in 1999-2000 compared to 0.102 million in the previous year. To the households the same increased to about 0.58 million in 1999-2000 from 0.46 million in 1998-99," it said.

During the reference year, the top four metros accounted for 63% of the total PC sales while the top cities contributed 23% and smaller towns and non-metros about 14 percent, it said adding that the market for PC in such areas was fast increasing.

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