India PC Market Declines 37.3% in Q2

• The traditional PC market had also registered a total shipment of 3.3 million units in the June 2019 quarter
• Discounting Lenovo’s ELCOT deal, notebooks grew 17.6 per cent in the June 2020 quarter
• HP Inc retained the top position in the overall PC market with 32.8 per cent share

It has been reported that India’s traditional PC market, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations have registered a 37.3 per cent decline year-on-year for the June 2020 quarter to 2.1 million units, as mentioned in the latest research conducted by IDC. The traditional PC market has also registered a total shipment of 3.3 million units in the June 2019 quarter. 

This was also the biggest quarter in the past five years as Lenovo has executed a mega deal of 1.1 million units for Electronics Corporation Of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT).

The IDC report also mentioned that “Outside this deal, the PC market saw an annual decline of 6.3 per cent in Q2 2020. In the product categories, desktop PCs were the most impacted with a 46.4 per cent decline.”

Year-on-year decline of 21 percent

Apart from this, discounting Lenovo’s ELCOT deal, notebooks grew 17.6 per cent in the June 2020 quarter from the year-ago period, it added. The consumers segment also saw a year-on-year decline of 21 percent in the June 2020 quarter, while there was a 3.3 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth. Online buying also played a major role in the quarter, and as a result, vendors also shipped almost one-third of their PCs to online channels, according to IDC.

HP Inc retained the top position in the overall PC market with 32.8 per cent share in the June 2020 quarter, followed by Lenovo (27.5 per cent), Dell Technologies (17.8 per cent), Acer Group (9.9 per cent) and Asus (5.1 per cent). IDC said the countrywide lockdown had forced everyone to work from home (WFH), resulting in strong demand for notebooks for enterprises rushed to ensure business continuity by providing its workforce the rehired infrastructure to work at home. Many IT services, global enterprises, and consulting companies placed large orders for notebooks PCs, it added. 

Decline in desktop buying 

This also led to an all-time high of enterprise notebook purchases with shipment growing by 105.5 percent year-on-year in Q2 2020. This also resulted in the decline of desktop buying and even converted a few orders to notebooks. Along with this, small and medium businesses also increased their procurement of notebooks with relatively moderate growth of 12.2 percent year on year in the quarter under review.

IDC India Market Analyst (PC Devices Bharat Shenoy also shared that the demand for notebooks exceeded expectations with most of the vendors exiting the quarter with minimum inventory, and despite the supply and logistics challenges in the first half of the quarter, companies executed most of the large orders in the June 2020 quarter. 

Challenges 

It has also been reported that most of the big orders for business continuity planning have been more or less executed in the quarter gone by, the PC market is now expected to face challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis and the looking economic situations. Enterprise buying will come back down to earth and SMB demand is expected to remain muted for some quarters.

Hence, in order to unlock this big segment, brands would be needing to be more innovative in addressing the specific challenges related to e-learning. It would require cross-platform and learning ecosystem partnerships to onboard first-time users.