It's bad news for PC makers in India, with the market witnessing a fall for the first time in 2014-15, even as sales of smartphones, phablets and tablets continue to see impressive growth rates.
PC sales declined over 10% in 2014-15 to 10.6 million units as compared to 11.8 million units in the previous financial year, acccording to a MAIT-IMRB report.
In value terms, the PC market saw a slide from Rs 25,117 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 21,058 crore in 2014-15.
In sharp contrast, smartphone sales rose 33% in 2014-15 to 69.6 million units from 52.43 million units in 2013-14, signalling a paradigm shift in buying preferences among consumers in India that is poised to become the world's second largest smartphone market by 2017, dethroning the US.
Sales of phablets saw a phenomenal growth of 527% to 50.8 million units, while tablet sales grew 4% to 3.4 million units in 2014-15.
In terms of revenue, the smartphone and phablet segment sales stood at Rs 65,815 crore in 2014-15, up 88% from Rs 34,900 crore in 2013-14.
"Phones are driving all the growth but PC is showing degrowth. The only way to arrest this is to look at ways to increase PC penetration in Indian households," said MAIT President Amar Babu, reports Deccan Herald.
Notebook sales, the key driver for PCs in India, fell 15% to 5.8 million units in 2014-15, while desktop computers saw a decline of 4% to settle at 4.7 million units.
The fall in notebook sales is being attributed to a sharp decline of 26% among households.
PC makers have some consolation though as the ICT hardware market that includes computers, servers and printers, grew 23.98% to $15.87 billion in 2014-15.
The industry is confident of growing at 17% in the current financial year as far as notebooks are concerned, but the desktop market is in for yet another spell of decline, with sales expected to drop by 10%.
The PC market had seen a modest growth of 6.7% in 2013-14 at 11.85 units.
The first quarter of calendar year 2015 saw the Indian smartphone market growing by about 21 percent on a year-on-year basis, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research.
Samsung led the smartphone market, with a 27.8% share, followed by Micromax at 15.3%.
