Local PC production soars as brands push for incentive schemes and government contracts | Biden News

India surpassed 5 million for the third consecutive quarter. The country now accounts for 5% of global PC shipments, up from 3% in Q1 2020.

Analysts attributed the growth to the expansion in local manufacturing of computers. Jash Shah, research analyst at Canalys said, “18% of all computers sold in India are now manufactured locally.” This minimized the impact of incidents in China on the supply of computers in India.

Several computer brands, including HP and Acer, have announced plans to expand local manufacturing in the last year to meet local demand, especially to qualify for large government contracts that require more than 50% of the supplied devices to be manufactured in India. Last November, Acer announced that its laptops will be manufactured at Dixon’s Noida plant, which will produce up to 500,000 Acer laptops annually.

Shah further added that India remained open for business to a large extent when most countries remained under blockade. “This helped the economy to re-emerge, creating further demand for computers and other IT infrastructure.”

According to the Canalys report, total PC shipments during the first quarter grew by 48% year-on-year (YoY). Despite the pressure on the global electronics supply chain due to the pandemic and the restrictions in China due to the increase in covid-19 cases, India has seen an average growth of 44% in computer shipments in the last six quarters.

Tablet was the fastest growing category with 1.6 million unit shipments growing at 69% YoY on the back of business orders, especially from the government sector.

Notebooks grew by just 36% YoY, yet they accounted for 3.4 million unit shipments during the quarter. With many offices returning to work, demand for desktops has also grown. A Canalys report shows that desktop shipments topped 880,000 units for a 64% YoY increase.

In terms of overall PC market share, HP was the market leader with 1,449,000 unit shipments accounting for 24.9% of the market share. Chinese brand Lenovo was the second leading brand with 1,122,000 unit shipments and 19.3% market share. Acer (10.7%), Dell (10%), and Samsung (7.4%) were the other top vendors in the top 5.

Shah said the PC market in India will remain strong over the next few quarters, despite the slowdown expected in other global markets.

Having said that, Shah warned that the continued inflation will eventually affect PC demand.

“With the Reserve Bank of India raising base lending rates, which are expected to continue rising through the year to combat wholesale inflation, businesses in debt will feel the pinch as they have less capital to work with,” he added.

As a result, consumers will stop making discretionary purchases, while companies, both small and large, will freeze budgets and hiring, which will affect IT purchasing and PC demand.