India has 1.3 billion people. They bought 3.4m PCs in Q3
(2020/11/12)
- Reference: 1605153553
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/12/india_pc_sales/
- Source link:
India clocked up its most prolific PC-buying quarter for seven years, with 3.4 million new devices shipped in the country between July and September 2020.
Analyst firm IDC [1]says the consumer PC segment recorded its biggest quarter ever, with two million devices shipped and 41.7 percent year-on-year growth and 167.2 percent growth compared to the previous quarter.
HPE leads the market with 28.2 percent market share, ahead of Lenovo’s 21.7 percent, Dell’s 21.3 percent. Acer and ASUS have 9.5 percent and 7.5 percent of the market respectively.
IDC India’s market analyst for PC devices Bharath Shenoy said enterprise sales were strong as large businesses invested in remote working. Smaller businesses started buying again in the quarter.
China's population is around 50 million higher than India's but the Middle Kingdom buys around 17 million PCs each quarter
No wonder IDC's Shenoy says India is an “underpenetrated” market, adding that that the shift to working from home and studying from home means PC vendors should have a few quarters of good times ahead.
But the fact remains that even with strong demand, many Indians can’t afford PCs.
That issue was highlighted last week after a 19-year-old student, enrolled in a tertiary institution under a program for gifted young women pursuing STEM, [2]took her own life after feeling that the cost of her education was a burden on her parents.
Aishwarya Reddy was participating in classes from lockdown though struggled to do so using a smartphone. Her family, whose income was reduced by the COVID-19 virus pandemic, [3]could not afford a second-hand laptop.
India's government and the institution the student attended have come in for criticism for not offering sufficient support. India’s government went so far as to put out a [4]press release acknowledging the tragedy though also pointing out that the student did not lodge documents that would have secured scholarship payments and improved her family’s financial position.
Which rather puts one good quarter of PC shipments into perspective. ®
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[1] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prAP46998720
[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/lsr-students-suicide-students-women-groups-stage-stir-in-delhi/articleshow/79131446.cms
[3] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/suicide-by-lsr-student-in-telangana-family-says-hit-by-lockdown-unable-to-fund-studies-7014829/
[4] https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1671689
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Analyst firm IDC [1]says the consumer PC segment recorded its biggest quarter ever, with two million devices shipped and 41.7 percent year-on-year growth and 167.2 percent growth compared to the previous quarter.
HPE leads the market with 28.2 percent market share, ahead of Lenovo’s 21.7 percent, Dell’s 21.3 percent. Acer and ASUS have 9.5 percent and 7.5 percent of the market respectively.
IDC India’s market analyst for PC devices Bharath Shenoy said enterprise sales were strong as large businesses invested in remote working. Smaller businesses started buying again in the quarter.
China's population is around 50 million higher than India's but the Middle Kingdom buys around 17 million PCs each quarter
No wonder IDC's Shenoy says India is an “underpenetrated” market, adding that that the shift to working from home and studying from home means PC vendors should have a few quarters of good times ahead.
But the fact remains that even with strong demand, many Indians can’t afford PCs.
That issue was highlighted last week after a 19-year-old student, enrolled in a tertiary institution under a program for gifted young women pursuing STEM, [2]took her own life after feeling that the cost of her education was a burden on her parents.
Aishwarya Reddy was participating in classes from lockdown though struggled to do so using a smartphone. Her family, whose income was reduced by the COVID-19 virus pandemic, [3]could not afford a second-hand laptop.
India's government and the institution the student attended have come in for criticism for not offering sufficient support. India’s government went so far as to put out a [4]press release acknowledging the tragedy though also pointing out that the student did not lodge documents that would have secured scholarship payments and improved her family’s financial position.
Which rather puts one good quarter of PC shipments into perspective. ®
Get our [5]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prAP46998720
[2] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/lsr-students-suicide-students-women-groups-stage-stir-in-delhi/articleshow/79131446.cms
[3] https://indianexpress.com/article/india/suicide-by-lsr-student-in-telangana-family-says-hit-by-lockdown-unable-to-fund-studies-7014829/
[4] https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1671689
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Economics matter
The authors reporting is shallow. There are two major factors here:
- PC sales in India reflect the level of disposable income with respect to purchase cost. India has 1.2 billion cellphone subscribers, with approximately 750 million unique users. Thus almost every adult has a cellphone now. There are 500 million smartphones in use. This means income levels support universal basic cellphone adoption and 40% can do low to mid range smartphones. PCs are still multiples of this and incremental value add is not established.
- The high PC price is partly taxes. The government is pushing for local manufacture. It is better economic sense to foster consumption driven by a domestic base, rather than serially import from China. This effectively does not apply to UK because wage levels don’t justify it. Given this, it is no surprise the author doesn’t consider this - it is standard cognitive dissonance to apply western economic imperative anywhere else too.