The total shipments inclusive of all form factors (desktops, notebooks and x86 servers) stood at 17 lakh units in the first six months of the current fiscal as against 13 lakh units during the same period in the previous year.
The overall top 5 vendor rankings remained unchanged in first six months of 2004-05 as compared to the first half of the previous fiscal, with HP maintaining the leadership position with 15 per cent share of the total unit shipments in the market.
HCL followed with 12 per cent share while IBM was at the third position with 8 per cent. Dell and Zenith rounded out the top 5 in that order.
Total desktop shipments in the first half stood at 16 lakh units, up by 29 per cent year-on-year. Consumer desktop shipments posted an impressive performance, growing faster at 31 per cent, as compared to commercial desktops that grew by 27 per cent during the period.
The notebook form factor continued to outshine all others growing from strength to strength at a triple-digit rate of 139 per cent year-on-year, albeit off a relatively smaller base. Unit shipments of notebooks fell short of the 1,00,000-unit mark by only a few hundred units.
The x86 servers also posted an impressive performance, growing by 26 per cent year-on-year to 30,367 units. Installations in the banking and financial services segment, coupled with the demand from IT services and manufacturingsector helped fuel the growth in x86 server volumes.
Things are only likely to get better once the WTO regime is introduced in India in early 2005. Though a wait-and-see approach in purchases is likely to result in a softer second half in anticipation of the WTO regime implementation, strong activity will drive the PC market upward in 2005-06, said Rishi Ghai, senior analyst, computing products research, IDC.
IDC visualises the bulk of the post-WTO activity to gain momentum from the first half of 2005-06 and continue partly into 2006-07, he added.
The research agency reckons vendors and channel partners to be better prepared for the WTO duty rationalisation to be implemented in 2005, than they were for the 2004 premature duty cuts that took the industry by surprise.
Meanwhile, the growth in the first six months of 2004-05 has been especially encouraging, considering a number of negative market forces that threatened to ruffle the business activity during the period.
While Q1 in the current fiscal saw speculation over the election of the central government and its subsequent stance on economic policies, the Q2 remained partly damp because of the confusion stirred by duty revisions announced in the union budget in July, Ghai said.
IDC expects buying in second half of 2004-05 to be helped largely by activity in the consumer space, coupled with a few large deals in education and government segments.
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