Indian PC Market Sets All-time Records As Q3 Shipments Top 2019 Total

India's PC market has achieved new sales records, according to analyst firm IDC.

Sales of what IDC calls traditional PCs – lappies, desktops and workstations – rose 30 per cent compared to the same time last year, reaching 4.55 million units. That's about five per cent of the global market – rather behind India's 17 per cent of global population. But IDC said the quarter was the best ever for PC sales in India, even beating total yearly consumer PC shipments in 2019.

Consumers shopped more than businesses, accounting for 2.3 million PC sales across the quarter. Business PC purchasing grew faster though, with shipments rising 47.6 per cent year-on-year as vendors cleared order backlogs.

IDC believes vendors "were able to fulfil a significant portion of these pending orders" – especially in the education sector.

Laptop computers predictably dominated the market, accounting for 81.5 per cent of sales.

The buying spree was good for HP, which stretched its lead as India's top PC supplier. Dell leapfrogged Lenovo into second place. Big Mike's discount PC barn shipped just over a million PCs in the quarter – an increase on the 731,000 it shipped for Q3 2020. Lenovo's shipments rose, too, but from 744,000 to a modest 830,000. Acer and ASUS rounded out the top five vendor chart, with the ever-present "other" sources accounting for 12 per cent of the market.

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IDC has also spotted a wearable device boom in India, with "earwear" sales ballooning from 10.5 million in Q3 2020 to 18.7 million in Q3 2021.

Smartwatch sales also jumped. Shipments were up 456 per cent year-on-year to 4.3 million devices.

Consumer tech Goliath Apple was notably absent from the list of leading vendors, which was dominated by Indian brands.

An outfit named Noise kept its share lead for a sixth straight quarter, and owns 26 per cent of the market. Innovatively capitalised boAt had 23.1 per cent, while Fire-Boltt grew from 5.5 per cent share to 15.3 per cent (no doubt because of that extra t) and shuntted rival brand Huami out of the top five. ®