India PC Market

Dell's Indian market share is at five per cent, trailing behind HP, Lenovo and local giant Hindustan Computers, which have had a presence in India longer and offer lower prices.

Dell's inability to compete with their price tags results at least partly from the company shipping fully-assembled systems into India. Paying more in duties than its rivals' locally manufactured boxes makes Dell boxes a harder sell.

Dell is investing $30m in the facility, which should turn out 400,000 systems per year, kicking off in July.

AMI-Partners estimates that 40 percent of small businesses in India plan to invest in computers for the first time in the next 12 months. This opens a huge opportunity for PC and related hardware, software and solution vendors. Over a million SBs, out of a total of 2.7 million SBs in India, do not own any computers, according to the latest study by Access Markets International (AMI) Partners. About 15 percent of the non-PC owning SBs surveyed said they would opt to buy laptop PCs, instead of a desktop.

Over 40% of SBs said their most preferred laptop or desktop brand is Hewlett-Packard. Most SBs base their buying decision on newspaper ads -- 65% of SBs said they rely on newspapers for gathering information about IT-related products. Next in line was the opinion of friends and family.

Adding another jewel to India’s crown as the fastest growing IT market in Asia Pacific**, HP has recently announced the launch of a new Rs. 100 crore (US$21.9m) manufacturing facility in Pantnagar, Uttaranchal, significantly adding to the country’s substantial IT resources.

In a nod to India’s flourishing domestic IT market, the new facility will be developed to meet the growing demand for HP products across the country.

Inaugurated recently by the Honorable Chief Minister of Uttaranchal, Shri Narayandatt Tiwari, the plant is HP’s second in the country and is estimated to produce a massive 3,000,000 computers each month.

The focus will be on manufacturing HP’s latest range of desktop computers, workstations, notebooks and servers for the rapidly expanding local market.

Importantly for the northern Indian town of Pantnagar, the new facility will provide vital employment (both direct and indirect) to around 1,000 people in the region, once fully operational.