India PC market sees 34% growth

By Staff and reports

NEW DELHI, India -- India's personal computer sales grew 34 percent to 1.88 million in the year to March, according to the country's computer hardware industry body.

Indian PC sales have been on an upswing in recent years due to soaring Internet penetration and falling prices.

The strong growth in the IT sector comes even though the rest of the country's economy is suffering a slowdown.

The higher PC sales during the second half of the year were attributed to an increase in demand from the corporate sector.

Computer sales are forecast to grow 33 percent in the year to March on the back of an overall increase in demand.

"Annual PC sales (are) predicted to touch 2.5 million units by March 2002," the Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT) said in a statement.

Internet boom

The number of Internet subscribers in 2000-01 rose 72 percent to 1.127 million with households accounting for more than half the total, MAIT said.

"The Internet subscriber base has been growing at a compound annual growth rate of 159 percent over the past 5 years," MAIT director Vinnie Mehta told India's Times Internet Network.

"This means that the country has about 4 million active Internet users at present since we assume that an average of 3.5 persons use each connection."

India's National Association of Software Services Companies (NASSCOM) estimates that India has 5.5 million Internet users who share 1.8 million Internet accounts.

NASSCOM projects that India will have 30 million Internet users by the end of 2003.

Analysts say the potential of broadband access through cable modems would facilitate the boom in Net usage in a country where there are more TV and cable connections than PCs and telephone lines.

But according to the MAIT survey, broadband access methods like digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable have yet to make a dent in the Internet surfing population with a respective 1 percent and 2 percent share of the market.

Reuters contributed to this report.