Traditional PC shipments drops 17 pc in India in Q1 2020, HP leads

Owing to supply issues faced by the vendors due to COVID-19, the India traditional PC market (desktops, notebooks, and workstations) declined by -16.7 per cent year-over-year (YoY) in the first quarter of 2020 with 1.8 million shipments, a new International Data Corporation (IDC) report said on Wednesday.

This decline was registered across all product categories. The nationwide lockdown in India from the second half of March aggravated the problems further for PC vendors since it resulted in a complete halt of retail and commercial orders, according to the IDC's ‘Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker'.

According to Jaipal Singh, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India, small and medium businesses (SMBs) are significantly impacted because of the shutdown with buying trend expected to remain low throughout the year.

"Vendors must be ready to capture these pockets of growth in the next few quarters to offset the sluggish demand," said Singh.

HP Inc. retained the top position in the overall PC market with a share of 28.2 per cent. It struggled with supplies of desktops, which led to fewer shipments than expected, and a 16.4% YoY decline in total shipments.

Dell Technologies replaced Lenovo in the second position despite witnessing a 16.5 per cent decline in its overall shipments.

Lenovo finished the quarter in the third-place while declining 33.6 per cent (YoY).

Notebooks recorded a -16.8 per cent decline due to significant YoY contractions in the consumer and education segments.

"As companies and employees try to adjust to remote working requirements, the immediate task is to make the workforce functional with minimal losses in productivity. Hence, the demand for notebooks in the enterprise segment is expected to remain strong in the coming quarters," said Bharath Shenoy , Market Analyst, PC Devices, IDC India.

The desktop category had relatively better inventory since most of it is assembled in India but saw a decline in demand and contracted -15.9 per cent YoY in the first quarter of 2020.

"Enterprises across all segments seem to be preferring notebooks over desktops during the current scenario of work from home under the lockdown," Shenoy noted.