Indian households lapping up laptops real fast

Thursday, 19 July 2007, 19:30 IST
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New Delhi: With the Indian IT industry witnessing a robust growth, the country's household segment, apart from the business sector, is fast lapping up notebooks inducing the market to grow fivefold, said an industry report. Notebook sales account for over 13 percent of the total PC (personal computer) market of which the household segment constitutes 37 percent and businesses 63 percent, said an annual IT industry performance report released by the Manufacturers' Association of Information Technology (MAIT), a leading IT hardware and training body. "Notebooks are becoming increasingly affordable, hence their consumption in the households grew fivefold accounting for more than one-fifth of the total notebooks market," Vinnie Mehta, executive director, MAIT, told a press conference here Thursday. Annual sales of notebooks grew by a whopping 97 percent, with 850,860 units sold in 2006-07 compared to 431,834 in 2005-06. The total PC sales rose to 6.34 million units in 2006-07 compared to over 5 million in 2005-06. The bi-annual review also reported the growth of desktop market that grew at a rate of 19 percent with the business sector accounting for 74 percent of sales and households 23 percent, which has remained constant for the past 2-3 years. "The household segment has the potential to grow at more than 20-25 percent. Having said that we do understand that the strengthening of the rupee and hike in interest rates have created a pressure on their disposable income," stated Mehta. Contrary to popular belief, the report highlighted the fact that the sale of desktops was more in northern India than in the southern and western India. "This I believe is more because of increased consumption (of desktops) by private companies and the several e-governance measures adopted by the government," Mehta explained, adding that a considerable growth in consumption was also noticed in the eastern region that is becoming more hi-tech by the day. However, the sale of servers registered a negative growth, declining by five percent in the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and by 53 percent in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune. The sale of UPS (uninterruptible power supply) grew by 80 percent in 2006-07 with 2.17 million units sold, of which households accounted for 42 percent and businesses 58 percent.
Source: IANS