Indian PC market grows 35% in Q3: Gartner

The Indian market grew 35.1 percent shipping more than 885,000 units in the

third quarter of 2004 according to Gartner, Inc. This includes desktops,

note-books and servers. India's share in the Asia Pacific region increased to

10.4 percent from 9.2 percent in the previous quarter.

According to Gartner, desk-top shipment grew annually by 32 percent during

this quarter while notebooks registered 126 percent growth. This is in

confirmation with growth trends observed during the first half of 2004. Small

and me-dium businesses and finance and banking continue to be the growth

drivers.

"While the corporate mar-ket continued to look healthy, top vendors are

now seen to be aggressively targeting the premium end of the consumer

segment," said Gartner India analyst-computing systems Vinod Nair.

Commenting on the note-book market, he said, "Local entrants are

expected to gain some market share in the short term with price-point

advan-tages over branded players, though quality of after-sales service will be

highly questionable."

With regards to future tre-nds, Nair commented, "Some telecom service

providers are now tapping avenues to bundle the desktop with Internet service

making it available at affordable monthly plans. If priced properly, this will

be a good move to increase desktop penetration and to grow the market in

India."

From a market share perspe-ctive, Hewlett-Packard maintai-ned top position

with 14.3 percent followed by HCL with 12.1 percent. IBM clocked 8.3 percent

market share.

Meanwhile from an Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) perspective, 8.5 million

units of PC were shipped in the third quarter 2004. This is an increase of 9.8

percent from the same period one year ago, equivalent to 3.1 percent

sequentially.

All markets in the region performed positively, especi-ally India, which grew

by 35 percent, compared to a year ago. Overall in Asia Pacific region, the

professional market grew 15.7 percent and the home market at 2.2 percent.

Deskbased PC market year over year growth is 6.5 percent while mobile PC is at

26.1 percent.