Indian ICT Hardware Market Stands at $15.87 billion

MAIT, the apex body representing India’s IT hardware, training and R&D services sectors, announced the findings of its Annual Industry Performance Review for the financial year 2014-15. According to the findings, the overall size of Indian ICT Hardware Market Stands at $15.87 billion, showing  a growth of 23.98% over the previous year. This segment includes PCs, Desktops, Phablets (Screen size  5 inch and more), tablets (screen size greater than or equal to 7 inch), smartphones, servers,  and peripherals. However, the total PC sales (desktop computers and notebooks) stood at 10.62 million (106.2 lakh) units, registering negative growth of 10 per cent over the last fiscal.

Commenting on the findings, Amar Babu, President of MAIT, said, “Phones are driving all the growth but PC is showing degrowth.  The only way to arrest this degrowth is to look at ways to increase PC penetration in Indian households. One way is by enabling infrastructure, providing low-cost loans and discount vouchers for purchasing PCs.  We also see a ray of hope for PC growth in future on account of some of Digital India initiatives which aims at having a digital Infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance & services on demand, and digital empowerment of citizens.”

Phablets made a huge growth of 527% over last year to do 50.8 million sales and is expected to grow by around 65% in the next fiscal year. They are seeing fast emerging and information consumption, especially in the larger cities. Multi-utility of the product coupled with the ease of usage and handling makes it a preferred device over the other devices.

Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director of MAIT says, “Government programs have been instrumental in driving the growth of notebook and also its decline. In a country where affordability is an issue, it is important for Government to provide the additional impetus to the adoption of PCs, thereby, driving overall development of the society. The bigger screen of phablets make it an extremely desirable product as it bridges the gap of a multi-utility device and an entertainment device. However, it is only up to the 5.5 in screen phablets that have found acceptance. Role of tablets as a ubiquitous device for consumers is fast diminishing. On the other hand desktop PC continues to de-grow and  found a niche amongst households in small towns and rural.”

Biswapriya Bhattacharjee, Vice president, BIRD, IMRB International said, “The study is based on over 42,000 face-to-face interviews with end-users spread over 35 cities with data projected to the 'All India Urban market' and 41 SCRs (socio economic regions) to estimate the ‘All India Rural market. It involved data collection after the 'last mile' that the product travels, i.e. from the premise where the product is finally installed’

Some salient findings of the 2014-15 Study are given below.

Phablets:

·         Phablets made a huge growth of 527% over last year to do 50.8 million sales and is expected to grow by around 65% in the next fiscal year

Smartphone:

Ø  Smartphone sales have increased by 33% over the last year and stood at 69.67 million

The Notebook Market:

• Notebook sales among Establishments during 2014-15have ended with a rise of 6%.The growth is mainly accounted by start-up companies and SMBs.

·         Notebook sales have been low with a negative growth rate offifteen per cent (-15%) in this fiscal year compared to a positive growth of 55% in the last year. This de-growth was driven by House-Hold (HH) segment with a negative growth of twenty six per cent (-26%). The market share of Notebooks in lower SECs has fallen down significantly. The high fall in notebook share is because of the large UP government deal which happened in the previous FY (2013-14)

• The notebook sale is expected to grow by around 17% in the FY 2015-16.  

The Desktop Market:

• Overall the Desktop market has shown a negative growth of -04% driven by Establishment as it de-grew at -14% over previous year.
• The desktop sales are expected to de-grow by around 10% in the FY 2015-16. The major sales of desktop are going to happen in rural India and lower SECs.

The Tablet Market:

• Tablet PC has witnessed a slight growth of 04% when compared to the huge growth in the last three years. The sales for 2014-15 stood stands at 3.48 million units as against 3.35 million units in 2013-14, which indicates the decline of the category even before it established itself.
• The market is expected to de-grow by about 16% in FY 2015-16 owing to the consumers moving to adoption of higher screen size smartphone and phablets with voice calling facility.

The Servers Market:

• During the year 2014-15, server sales have registered a growth of 30% over the last financial year and it stood at 182,727 units in the current year.

• The server market is expected to de-grow by another 10% in FY 2015-16. The movement of SMBs to cloud is one of the major reasons for this.

The Peripherals Market:

• Overall printer sales have grown by a small margin of 1.7%during 2014-15 over the last fiscal year. The sales at 2014-15 stood at 3.15 million (31.5 lakh) units.

• Among hard copy peripherals, the sales of Ink Jet printer have remained stable. While Laser Jet Printer had a positive growth of 5% over last FY.

• Dot-matrix printer sales have declined by 12% to stand at 0.238 Million Units from 0.270 million (2.70 lakh) units in 2013-14.

Summary of Findings:

	Total Installs			Total Revenue (in Rs Crores)
Product	April 13–March 14	April 14 -March 15	% Growth	April 13–March 14	April 14–March 15	% Growth
Computers
Desktop PCs	5,013,674	4,796,172	-4%	8021.9	7673.9	-4%
Notebooks	6,838,292	5,819,230	-15%	17095.7	13384.2	-12%
Servers	141,025	182,727	30%	1410.3	1735.9	23%
Smartphones, Phablets & Tablets
Smartphone	52,433,614	69,667,091	33%	28838.5	38316.9	33%
Phablet	8,100,000	50,820,709	527%	4050.0	25410.4	527%
Tablet PC	3,352,573	3,481,400	4%	2011.5	2088.5	4%
Other Peripherals
Dot matrix	270,000	238,431	12%	214.7	166.9	-22%
Inkjet	1,170,000	1,173,875	0%	538.2	352.2	-35%
Laser	1,660,000	1,741,585	5%	1328.0	1219.1	-8%
UPS Systems	3,006,595	1,514,306	-50%	1804.0	757.2	-58%

Definitions:

• Top four Cities/Metros/Class A cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata
• Next four Cities/Class B Cities – Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune
• Class C Cities/Towns: Other Smaller Towns/Cities