Q3 India PC shipments see 8.3% decline; HP is clear market leader

Q3 India PC shipments see 8.3% decline; HP is clear market leader

The latest quarterly reports by IDC India clearly show how the smartphone shipments in India have grown by manifold, especially at the cost of feature phones. On the other hand, in sync with an year-long expectation, PC shipments suffered from repercussions of the global decline. Though overall PC shipments rose thanks to special educational projects by some Indian state governments, the demand for consumer PCs remained low as expected.

In Q3 2013, the overall PC shipments were 3.24 million units. That's a growth of 8.4 percent over Q3 2012, however, a quarter-on-quarter slide of -8.3 percent over the Q2 2013. According to Kiran Kumar, Research Manager at IDC, “Special education projects in states like UP & Tamil Nadu and a much delayed spending in the year from the BFSI segment have largely skewed the overall growth in Q3 towards commercial segment.”

Earlier in its worldwide quarterly report, IDC had predicted that tablets will surpass PCs by Q4 2013. Worldwide PC shipments are expected to fall by -10.1% in 2013, slightly below the projection from earlier this year but by far the most severe yearly decline the industry has seen.

Consumer demand for PC shipments slips

According to Manish Yadav, Market Analyst, IDC, “July and August was noted to be upbeat as lower tier channels stocked up owing to exchange rate pressures. However, excess stock mixed with poor end user demand weakened channel buying in September”. However, the festivities and back-to-school season did result into consumers indulging in portable PCs. For vendors, in terms of market share, HP takes the top spot in India with 32.3 percent share in Q3 2013. The shipment boost is due to a large educational project sanctioned by the Uttar Pradesh government. HP also maintained better pricing against competition for both desktops and portable PCs.Lenovo took second place with a share of 13.6 percent, followed by Dell enjoying the third spot with 11.8 percent market share. IDC predicts that seasonality and price hike may disrupt PC buying in the quarter ending December. Transition to Haswell family of Intel processors could also be yet another reason. Additionally, it expects elections in Delhi, civil issues in the state of Andhra Pradesh to further impact the overall buying in some large Indian states, as the calendar year ends.

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