The traditional PC market, comprising desktops, notebooks, and workstations, declined by 16.7% year-on-year in India during the first quarter of 2020, as per data released by International Data Corporation (IDC).
As per the market research firm, total shipment of traditional PCs stood at 1.8 million units in the January-March, 2020, quarter. The shipments during the same period last year stood at 2.1 million
IDC said this decline was registered across all product categories and can be attributed largely to the supply issues faced by the vendors due to COVID-19, which impacted the manufacturing and logistics arms of vendors in China.
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, it added.
Jaipal Singh, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India said, “There has been a huge uptake in learning and working from home in India during this countrywide shutdown as students, parents, working executives, and companies come to terms with the new reality during this period.”
“On the other hand, small and medium businesses are significantly impacted because of the shutdown with the buying trend expected to remain low throughout the year. Thus, vendors must be ready to capture these pockets of growth in the next few quarters to offset the sluggish demand,” he added.
HP retained the top position in the overall PC market with a share of 28.2% in 1Q20, while Dell Technologies replaced Lenovo in the second position with 25.9% market share. Lenovo finished the quarter in the third-place with a market share of 20%.
As per IDC, Notebooks recorded a 16.8% decline due to significant y-o-y contractions in the consumer and education segments. The private sector, however, posted much better results with companies advising their employees to work from home in March. “In anticipation of an upcoming lockdown, many businesses increased their orders for notebooks, which resulted in a 7.1% y-o-y increase for this segment. The growth would have been even higher, if not for supply constraints which affected the industry in February and March and caused some of the orders to be delayed until 2Q20,” IDC said.
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% y-o-y 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,” Bharath Shenoy, market analyst, PC Devices, IDC India, said. He added that as companies and employees tried 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.
