Date:15/02/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/02/15/stories/2006021500560500.htm

Back A buoyant IT hardware market

Our Bureau

A strong demand for PCs has led to a boom in the Indian IT hardware industry.

THE IT hardware market in India is on an upswing. With strong consumption in the telecom, banking and financial services, retail and BPO sectors and an aggressive adoption in smaller towns, computer sales in the country has increased by 36.2 per cent during the first six months of the current financial year with vendors selling 2.34 million units.

The industry's upbeat mood can well be gauged from the fact that PC sales projections for the financial year 2005-06 have been increased to 4.7 million units against 4.25 million units targeted earlier.

The high growth in PC sales can also be attributed to major e-governance initiatives of the State and Central Governments including DCA 21, Income Tax and Excise department projects. Significant consumption in the small and medium enterprises added to the industry numbers. In addition, increased PC purchases in smaller towns and cities continued undiminished.

Compared demographically, the B and C-class cities together accounted for 70 per cent of the total PC sales, registering a growth of over 44 per cent in absolute terms.

The top four metros accounted for 30 per cent of the sales with 16 per cent growth in consumption.

The notebook shipments touched 1.53 lakh units between April and September 2005, compared to 79,230 units in the same period last year.

Printer sales grew by 43 per cent in this period with sales in the laser printer category witnessing a record 159 per cent growth. The growth projection for overall printer sales in 2005-06 is 39 per cent with sale of over 1.63 million units.

The networking market also looked promising with the sales of Network Interface Cards increasing 115 per cent during April-September 2005 to 19.99 lakh units (9.30 lakh units), while the sales of Hubs jumped 25 per cent year-on-year.

The number of active Internet subscribers (entities) increased to 3.17 million in September 2005, compared to 2.92 million in March 2005.