A study by IT hardware body MAIT and IMRB showed that the demand for desktop computers and notebook PCs in urban areas was declining. However, the popularity of these devices was picking up in rural India. Sales of desktops shrank 4% and of Notebooks fell 15% in urban India in 2014-15 while, in rural India, sales of desktops grew 33% and of Notebooks 11%.
The sales of desktops declined from 5.01 million in 2013-14 to 4.8 million in last financial year. At the same time, the rural sales grew from 1.30 million to 1.73 million units during the period.
Likewise, for Notebooks, the sales in urban areas declined to 5.81 million from 6.84 million units year-on-year, in rural areas it rose to 0.36 million from 0.32 million.
“The urban areas have reached a saturation point. We are seeing increasing adoption in rural areas because the penetration there is low. We are confident that the growth rate will continue, especially with initiatives like Digital India and as banking services and education sector grows, the demand will only go up,” MAIT executive director Anwar Shirpurwala told The Hindu .
The study pegged the overall size of Indian ICT Hardware market at USD 15.87 billion, up 23.98 per cent over the previous year. ICT hardware market includes PCs, desktops, phablets, tablets, smartphones, servers, and peripherals.
It added that overall the total PC sales (which includes desktop computers and Notebooks) stood at 10.62 million units, registering negative growth of 10 per cent over the last fiscal. The decline was mainly due to introduction of larger screen phones with multiple features eating into the share of Notebooks.
MAIT President Amar Babu said, “Phones are driving all the growth but PC is showing degrowth. The only way to arrest this degrowth 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 of Digital India initiatives which aims at having a digital Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance & services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens.”
