With the economy on the rise, there seems to be no stopping in the sales of computers which has witnessed an impressive growth of 26 per cent in 2006-07.

The total sales of personal computers – desktop and notebook combining – were 6.34 million in the last fiscal – a growth of 26 per cent from last year’s performance. Next year, the sales are expected to cross the eight million mark, says Manufacturing Association for Information Technology (MAIT) in its annual survey. At the moment the hardware sector has $7 billion local and $2 billion export market.

The PC penetration too has increased from last year’s 18 computers for every 1000 persons to 22 computers. Internet connectivity too is on the rising path.

However, the southern market including Bangalore and emerging hubs like Mysore and Mangalore has witnessed a dip in desktop sale. Last year, the region accounted for 32 per cent of the national market, but this time the share has come down to 24 per cent. The consumption has increased in the northern and western zones.
MAIT did not see any pattern in the downfall. Executive Director Vinnie Mehta said that southern region did not spend too much on IT purchase in the first half since most of the sales figures are representative of the bulk purchase. The sales picked up in the second half.

The proportion of notebooks in the overall PC sales is fast growing because of increasing affordability. Accounting for over 13 per cent of the total PC market in 2006-07 compared to nine per cent a year ago, notebook sales recorded a high growth of 97 per cent.

Notebooks market
While notebooks sales in the business segment grew by 41 per cent, its consumption in households grew five fold accounting for more than a fifth of the total notebooks market.

There seems to be few takers for low-priced computers that run on Celeron processors. The P4 based units  dominated by accounting for 80 per cent of total sales. The new Intel dual-core processors garnered seven per cent of the market.

The four metros accounted for 35 percent of total sales, while the next four cities including Bangalore accounted for only seven percent of the sales.

The growth is the maximum in other smaller cities where 58 per cent of computers were sold in the last one year.