Mumbai: With home markets expanding to 26.4 per cent of total personal computer (PC) sales, PC shipments in India reached over 2.2 million units in the third quarter of 2007, an increase of 19.7 per cent per cent over the same period in 2006, says leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner, Inc.

''HP continues to retain its number 1 position, constantly widening the gap with its closest competitor HCL, through a robust growth in mobile PC shipments. Lenovo, Acer and HCL, continue to out grow the market lead primarily by the strong growth in mobile PCs (see Table 1) and by home market sales'', said Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst for Gartner's client computing group.

''The third quarter usually coincides with the festival buying season in India - the biggest consumer spending period. However, this year in spite of the festival buying season falling in Q4, consumer spending has not followed the conventional pattern, proof of which has been the aggressive retail sales of mobile PCs in the third quarter itself. Most leading mobile PC brands have reported a dominant per centage of their sales in Q3'07 coming from the consumer segment'', said Chakraborti. ''What is worth noting here is that the Tier II and Tier III home segment which hitherto were almost exclusively buying desk based PCs are now also opting for mobile PCs as well'', he added.

Note: Table includes desk-based PCs and mobile PCs.  Source: Gartner (November 2007)

India's Mobile PC sales grew 99.4 per cent to nearly half a million in the third quarter of 2007. Acer leapfrogged to the top 3 mobile PC brands (see Table 2) as its focus on channel partners and large format retail outlets have started to pay off. HCL a late entrant in the mobile PC market has also witnessed strong shipments close on the heels of its nearest rival Toshiba, vying for the fifth position.

Source: Gartner (November 2007)

The desk based PC shipments grew at 7.8 per cent to 1.72 million. This has been the highest growth in the last 3 quarters, driven predominantly by large brands like HP, HCL, Lenovo and Acer supported by the SMB segment, which is being seen as the new driver of desk based PC growth in India. The slow down of the desk based PC market can be attributed to negative growth of the white box segment, which has been shrinking due to the marketing onslaught of the large local and multinational PC vendors and the home market's growing preference for mobile PCs over desk based PCs.

Source: Gartner (November 2007)

Large format retail outlets, a recent phenomenon in the PC market, have started contributing in a big way towards driving PC sales, especially mobile PC sales in urban areas. With a major expansion of these outlets on the cards, they are expected to help draw in a large number of first time buyers.