PC sales dipped 10pc while phablets grew by 527pc

According to MAIT’s Annual Industry Performance Review for the financial year 2014-15, the overall size of Indian ICT Hardware Market Stands at $15.87 billion, showing a growth of 23.98pc over the previous year.

This segment includes PCs, Desktops, Phablets (Screen size 5 inch and more), tablets (screen size greater than or equal to 7 inch), smartphones, servers, and peripherals.

However, the total PC sales (desktop computers and notebooks) stood at 10.62 million (106.2 lakh) units, registering negative growth of 10pc over the last fiscal.

Amar Babu, president of MAIT , said, “Phones are driving all the growth but PC is showing degrowth. The only way to arrest this degrowth is to look at ways to increase PC penetration in Indian households. One way is by enabling infrastructure, providing low-cost loans and discount vouchers for purchasing PCs. We also see a ray of hope for PC growth in future on account of some of Digital India initiatives which aims at having a digital Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance & services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens.”

Phablets made a huge growth of 527pc over last year to do 50.8 million sales and is expected to grow by around 65pc in the next fiscal year.

Biswapriya Bhattacharjee, vice president , BIRD, IMRB International said, “The study is based on over 42,000 face-to-face interviews with end-users spread over 35 cities with data projected to the ‘All India Urban market’ and 41 SCRs (socio economic regions) to estimate the ‘All India Rural market. It involved data collection after the ‘last mile’ that the product travels, i.e. from the premise where the product is finally installed.”