Indian PC market grew by a record 44.5% in 2021

India’s traditional PC market grew by 44.5% in 2021, driven by strong demand from enterprises and SMBs as well as the need for remote working hardware.

New data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker analysed the country’s desktop, notebooks, and workstation market.

IDC said that while the notebook category was the volume driver, with shipments reaching 11.6 million units, the desktop category, which had seen a steep decline in 2020, managed a recovery with 30% year-on-year growth. It said this can be attributed to strong demand across enterprises, SMBs, and consumer segments.

The top five companies were named as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, and Asus. HP dominated with 31.5% of the market share, a 58.7% increase from its 28.7% in 2020. Dell came in second place with 23.6% of the market, while Lenovo ranked third at 18.4%.

IDC described the market as upbeat, as vendors collectively shipped over four million PCs in the fourth quarter of last year. It said the drivers for the market were remote working coupled with better supplies.

The desktop category continued its upward trajectory driven by demand in the education and virtual learning environment segments as it shipped over 800,000 units for the first time in eight quarters. Notebooks also clocked over three million units for the second quarter in succession.

Meanwhile, the commercial segment posted a sharp growth of 81.4% in the last quarter of the year, while the consumer segment witnessed a more subdued yearly growth, as vendors focused on inventory correction following a strong third quarter.

“While the incumbent brands managed to get better allocations and ship bigger volumes of PCs, new brands that entered the Indian market in the past few years struggled to get timely supplies thereby strained to fully capitalise on the market opportunity,” said Bharath Shenoy, senior market analyst of PC Devices at IDC India.

Global PC shipments reached 86.7 million units in the third quarter of 2021, representing a 3.9% year-on-year increase, according to data from IDC published last October. For the sixth quarter in a row, the pandemic drove up PC sales while also causing supply chain disruptions like component shortages.