In a recently issued MAIT and IMRB IT industry performance annul review report 2011-12, the performance of assembled PC market, which has been on a decline for the past 2 years, has astonished people by registering a fabulous growth of 56% in FY'12. Comparing with the previous year, the share of assembled PC market was at 20% in FY'11, which has increased by 28%.
Looking at the broader picture, the overall PC sales in the country grew by 16% in 2011-12 at 10.8 mn units over the same period last year. Though MAIT had projected a growth of 26% for 2011-12, but factors like rupee devaluation, currency fluctuation, flood in Thailand (affecting supply of hard drives) and Tsunami in Japan pulled sales down by about a million units.
The other interesting observation made was that in FY'12, the contribution made by SMEs and governments, which are considered to be the largest buyers of the IT industry was negligible. In both desktops and notebooks, SME and government share dipped drastically. As per MAIT, factors of this de-growth could be macro-economics like inflation and inability to expand their demand and businesses, however MAIT has expressed great worry if this disturbance continues to exist next year.
According to Dr Alok Bhardwaj, president, MAIT, "We were quite surprised with the growth coming from MNC brands followed by assembled PCs. Despite Thai floods and cost of components growing high, still both the key components of PC industry continues to register growth. However, the share of Indian PCs brand decreased by 37%."
Putting another perspective to the assembled PCs market growth, Biswapriya Bhattacharjee of IMRB said, "During the Thai flood there was sacristy in demand of branded PCs, which was wisely capitalized by assembled PC makers, and these white box makers managed to liquidate their inventory fast and at a very cheap price. Additionally, tier-2 and 3 cities also showed great acceptance to the assembled PC makers."
On the positive side, the market saw a surge in PC penetration in the household segment, with SEC-C (socioeconomic classes) towns registering the highest growth of 45%. Keeping low exceptions for FY'13, MAIT projected the PC industry to grow at 15% to reach 12.4 mn units in 2012-13.