The great Indian hardware bazaar

MAIT conducts the Industry Performance Review - ITOPs, that’s executed by market research firm IMRB (Indian Market Research Bureau). ITOPs aims to address the hardware sector’s efforts to manage the business environment and gauge market potential and consumer trends. Here are some of the highlights of the review

The share of home users in the Internet pie appears to have stabilised. Although the growth has been commendable, these numbers pale when compared to the cellular subscriber base.	Notebooks, for the first time ever, found their way into homes in a big way in 2003-04. About 15,694 notebooks were sold to the home segment accounting for 18% of the total market. Compared to the last fiscal, sales to large enterprises grew by only 9% and the proportion shrunk from 53% to 40% of the total sales in the business segment. Notebook sales to small businesses dipped by 7%.
The Server market registered a negative growth of 6%, despite strong growth in Class B and Class C towns. Sales in the top 4 metros slumped by 28%, adversely impacting overall sales. Although the top 4 cities accounted for 60% of sales, sales declined by 28% in this segment. Consumption grew over 70% in smaller towns.	The high growth in PC sales was due to increased consumption by Industry verticals such as telecom, banking & financial services, manufacturing, retail and BPO/IT-enabled services as well as major e-Governance initiatives of the Central and State Governments. The Excise duty reduction on PCs from 16% to 8%, reduction in peak customs duty from 15% to 10%, the removal of 4% SAD (Special Additional Duty) in early-January 2004 resulted in price drops ranging from 8% to 12%. The effect of the declaration of 0% excise duty on PCs is to be seen this year.
	2003-04: The Pentium 4 dominated the market with 73% market share AMD/Cyrix and other processors’ annual market share 14%; H1/2003-04: 18%. H2/2003-04: 11%