India PC sales up 15.7 percent in Apr-Jun 2012: IDC

The India PC market shipments for Q2 2012 (April-June) stood at 2.86 million units, a sequential gain of 8.6 percent over the previous quarter, while the year-on-year growth was at 15.7 percent, IDC said in a statement.

"Despite the environment around costs being volatile and unpredictable, consumers continued to be demanding, which has largely enabled the PC growth in Q2 2012," IDC Senior Analyst Kiran Kumar said.

Further, fulfilments for the ELCOT project in Tamil Nadu for a second successive quarter ensued growth in commercial PC market as well, Kumar added.

The state-run Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot) had issued a tender seeking rate contract for over nine lakh laptops to be supplied and Lenovo had bagged a major portion of the deal along with other companies like Acer and HCL.

In terms of vendor share, Lenovo sustained its lead with a 17.1 percent market share in Q2 2012, while HP tipped Dell to take the second place with a 13.7 percent market share. "HP's success is largely owing to their linearity measures to lift the performance of their channel partners, which resulted in a constructive growth for the vendor.

Further, introduction of new series of budget laptops coupled with a good balance of product mix continued to boost their growth in Q2," Kumar said.

Despite a high brand awareness in the country, Dell slipped to the third spot with a market share of 13.4 percent in the reported quarter as it stuck to its strategy of playing in the mid to high-end price bands.

For the July-September quarter, PC sales are expected to remain strong.

As observed in the past few years, IDC expects Q3 2012 to remain buoyant, as seasonality owing to festive season and education buying continues to drive Q3 as the strongest period of PC sales in the India PC market, IDC Associate Research Director Adwaita Govind Menon said.

"However, as we move ahead, barring fulfilments for the largest deal noted so far ie ELCOT (which looks to extend into CY 2013), IDC observes commercial PC spending to be adversely impacted by the prolonged crisis in the Euro zone and other global markets," Menon said.

Rupee depreciation has further diluted the decision making process amongst enterprises and small and medium businesses, which is stalling the growth as noted in the recent past, Menon added.