Days after Gartner predicted a 17 percent growth for the Indian PC market this year, CyberMedia Research has pegged the expansion at a more realistic 8%.
The number of PCs sold in India had grown 6% in 2011, the Gurgaon-based firm said.
The prediction is likely to disappoint some in the industry who were looking forward to a crackling year. However, Gartner too had warned that growth will be only 8.4% excluding a laptop-distribution scheme by the Jayalalitha government in Tamil Nadu.
Interestingly, despite strong growth, Notebooks will continue to undersell desktops in India even in 2012.
They will, however, raise their share from 44% to 46%. Desktop share will fall from 56% to 54%. All-in-One PCs, which look like slightly fat LCD TVs, will increase their share from 1% to 2%.
Total number of desktop PCs, which had fallen 4% in 2011, will grow 4% in 2012, the firm said.
In what will be music to Intel’s ears — and perhaps to those of AMD as well — Ultrabooks — or ultraslim notebooks, will become ‘mainstream’ by the end of 2012. Intel is already pushing component-makers to bring down Ultrabook prices by about 40% by the end of the year.
Sumanta Mukherjee, Lead Analyst at CyberMedia Research for IT, seems to believe that Ultrabook prices will fall significantly by the end of the year.
Both Intel and AMD are set to reveal new chips — Ivy Bridge by Intel and Trinity APU by AMD — this month that will drive down prices of ultrathin PCs.
Assembled PC makers will continue to find the going tough for another two quarters as supply of hard-disk drives are expected recover from last year’s Thai floods only by the September-ending quarter.
The fall of Indian rupee against the dollar will also keep PC prices up.
“All-in-One desktop PCs are likely to see increase in adoption driven by demand from the BPO-ITeS segment due to the attractiveness of the form factor in terms of savings in real-estate cost and lower overall power consumption. Beyond this, aesthetics are expected to drive adoption in front-office and consumer settings,” CyberMedia Research added.
