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Rupee slump pushes up prices of PC, laptop by 4-8 percent
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 14 October 2008, 16:25 IST
New Delhi: Prices of PCs and laptops are set to go up four to eight percent, costing one buyer an excess amount of Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 per machine, reports Business Line.
Hit by the rupee's slump against the greenback, PC manufacturers are effecting a price hike across various product categories, including desktops, laptops and select peripherals.
"In today's market, we are dealing with the variation in rupee on almost a daily basis. In the last one month or so, we have raised prices of PCs and laptops and other IT products by over four percent," George Paul, Executive Vice-President, HCL Infosystems, said.
Since bulk of the components that go into a PC, including processor, hard disk drive and motherboard are imported, a weaker rupee starts to pinch as vendors are forced to shell out more to import these components.
The Chairman of Zenith Computers, Raj Saraf, said that his company would raise prices by about five per cent for desktops and laptops by October 15. The impact of rupee, according to him, would also be felt on prices of products such as mouse, keyboard and monitors, among others.
HP has already effected some price hike for desktops and notebooks - the last one took place in early October - raising prices by a cumulative seven to eight percent to neutralise the impact of the local currency movement.
"The rupee depreciation directly translates into a higher cost for the PC manufacturers, as the industry does not work on heavy margins. It is difficult to absorb any escalation in costs," said Rajiev Grover, Director-consumer products, personal systems group at HP India.
