High inflation and economic uncertainty pushed down sales of desktops
and laptops in the country by 5.9 percent to nearly 2.9 million units
in the third quarter of 2012 over the same period last year, research
firm Gartner said on Wednesday.
The combined desk-based and mobile PC market
in India totalled nearly 3.15 million units in the third quarter of
2011, Gartner said in a statement.
"Consumers accounted for 47 percent of total PC sales in the third quarter of 2012 compared to 55 percent in the third quarter of 2011," Gartner Principal Research Analyst
Vishal Tripathi said.
This emphasises the fact that despite the
festive season and availability of various end user schemes on PCs, the
market was impacted by high inflation, global economic uncertainty and
limited share of wallet as consumers preferred to spend on other
consumer durables, he added.
White boxes (including parallel
import), which accounted for 47 percent of the overall desktop market,
declined 35 percent in Q3 of 2012 compared to the same period last
year.
Mobile PCs, with a 23 percent year-on-year increase, helped drive overall market growth.
Gartner
said the execution of the Tamil Nadu government order, and a strong
increase in the consumer space, helped Lenovo retain the number one
position with 17 percent market share in the reported quarter.
Acer
(ranked number two) grew its share to 15.7 percent in the said quarter
from 10.8 percent in Q3 of 2011, while HP increased its share to 15.5
percent in Q3 2012 from 13.3 percent in the corresponding quarter last
year.
Dell and HCL, fourth and fifth in the tally, saw market
share declining to 12.4 percent (from 15 percent) and 3.4 percent
(from 5.6 percent), respectively.
Gartner said multinational
brands contributed to more than half of the total PC shipments in the
first quarter of 2012, with shipments from Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo
representing 60.6 percent of the market.