India's PC mkt records highest ever quarterly supply at 4.49 mn units in Jul-Sept

New Delhi, Nov 26 (PTI) PC supplies in the Indian market increased marginally in the July-September period to 4.49 million units, which is the highest ever supplies in a quarter, market research firm International Data Corporation said in a report on Tuesday.
     According to IDC Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker report, HP led the personal computer market with a 29 per cent market share despite a decline in shipment by 1.5 per cent on a year-over-year (YoY) basis to 1.3 million units.
     "India's traditional PC market (inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations) shipped an all-time high of 4.49 million units in the third quarter of 2024, up 0.1 per cent year-over-year (YoY). The desktop category declined by 8.1 per cent YoY, while the notebook and workstation categories saw marginal growth of 2.8 per cent YoY and 2.4 per cent YoY, respectively," the report said.
     Online festival sales drove the demand for premium notebooks (priced above USD 1,000 or about Rs 83,000 apiece), which grew by 7.6 per cent YoY, the report said.
     IDC India & South Asia research manager, Bharath Shenoy said that brands capitalized on e-tail sales by offering steep discounts, cashbacks, and bundled accessories.
     "Many of them also matched similar pricing in their brand stores and offline channels like Larger Format Retail stores (LFRs), leading to the second biggest consumer quarter in history. By leveraging these diverse strategies, vendors were able to tap into different market tiers ultimately driving a significant increase in consumer PC sales," Shenoy said.
     During the reported quarter, the consumer segment declined by 2.9 per cent YoY despite vendors aggressively discounting a wide range of PCs on e-tail platforms.
     The demand situation was more organic this year, and unlike 3Q23, vendors did not overstock in the September 2024 quarter, thereby leading to a marginal YoY decline.
     The commercial segment grew by 4.4 per cent YoY, while the enterprise segment grew by 9.6 per cent YoY, the report said.
     "HP Inc led the market with a share of 29 per cent in the third quarter of 2024, topping the charts in both commercial and consumer segments with shares of 34.3 and 24.8 per cent, respectively. HP shipped 1.05 million notebooks in the third quarter 2024, its third biggest quarter ever, driven by strong performance in the enterprise segment which grew by 30.2 per cent YoY and good demand for consumer notebooks during festive sales," the report said.
     Lenovo followed HP with 778,000 units, accounting for a 17.3 per cent market share.
     Dell Technologies and Acer Group occupied third spot with 14.6 per cent market share.
     Acer recorded the highest growth of 26.2 per cent in PC shipments among its competitors during the reported quarter.
     Asus shipment declined by 22.3 per cent on YoY basis to 435,000 units in the third quarter, the report said.
     IDC India, South Asia and ANZ, Associate Vice President, Devices Research, Navkendar Singh said that the commercial PC Market in India is on the recovery path as enterprises have slowly started refreshing their IT devices.
     "The IT/ITES buying has kickstarted and is expected to pick up momentum in the calendar year (CY) 2025. Meanwhile, the growing adoption of PCs for gaming and content creation coupled with the increasing focus on AI features and tools in PCs are expected to drive the consumer segment in the fourth quarter of 2024 and CY2025, thereby facilitating it to close off 2024 and 2025 in green," Singh said.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)