India PC sales dip 18% in June quarter to 1.75 mn

New Delhi: The PC market in India registered an 18 percent decline at 1.75 million units in April-June 2017 due to the impact of GST rollout but is expected to recover in the coming months, research firm IDC said on Tuesday.

The consumer PC segment tumbled 22.7 percent year-on- year to 0.81 million units in the second quarter of 2017, while commercial PC market declined by 13.4 percent y-o-y to 0.94 million units.

According to IDC, the shipments were lower by 18.9 percent compared to January-March 2017 quarter.

"Outlook on discretionary spending remained optimistic. However, the channel partners remained cautious and planned for de-stocking due to the impact of the GST implementation, which led to lesser sell-in for Q2 2017 quarter," IDC India Associate Research Manager (Client Devices) Manish Yadav said.

Apart from the lack of fulfilment of special projects and slowness observed in government spending, GST implementation impacted the business in India, IDC said.

IDC said the traditional PC market is looking to recover in due course post GST implementation.

Seasonality aided by increase in consumer spending along with fulfilment of state-owned education projects are anticipated to drive growth, it added.

"Demand for PCs would be fuelled by small business buying as this segment of business users would look to comply with GST norms which came in effect from July 1, 2017," Yadav said.

HP was on top with 33.8 percent share of the Indian PC market, followed by Dell (17.7 percent), Lenovo (16.9 percent) and Acer (12.4 percent).