The PC market in the country grew only 0.3 percent last year. However, this market has registered a decline of 28.5 percent in the fourth quarter of last year. This market includes desktops, notebooks and workstations. The notebook category declined by 37.8 percent in the fourth quarter, while desktop shipments increased. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), due to high inflation and weak sentiment, the consumer segment of this market has declined by 27.4 percent and the enterprise segment by 42.6 percent on a year-on-year basis. However, the Government and Education segments have grown by 117.6 per cent and 28.3 per cent respectively. Desktops and workstations recorded growth of 32.3 percent and 24.7 percent on year-on-year basis but there was a decline of 8.4 percent in the notebook category. The premium notebooks category grew by 14.6 percent but the commercial segment was down by 7.9 percent. Shipments through online channels have declined by 9.4 percent last year. HP ranks first in the country’s PC market. Its market share is 30.3 percent but it has declined by 3.2 percent on year-on-year basis. American company Dell is in second place. Its market share is 19.2 percent and it has decreased by one percent compared to last year. China’s Lenovo is in third place. Its market share was 18.9 percent and there was an annual growth of 3.1 percent. It is followed by Acer and ASUS with market shares of 9.9 percent and 6.8 percent respectively. The re-increase in Corona cases in China at the end of last year has affected many industries. This is also likely to affect the launch of new PCs and laptops. The problems of suppliers of companies manufacturing personal computers and laptops in China also increased due to Corona. This will cause delays in shipments, which will impact the availability of products like new laptops. Contract manufacturing firms like Compal, Inventec, Quanta and Wistron did not suffer from shortages of components or workers. They had not asked their suppliers to increase production due to the availability of inventory and the expectation that demand would not be very high in the first quarter.
