Apart from these traditional sectors, high consumption was also witnessed in SMEs, education, retail and other computer centric small enterprises. In addition, the trend of increased PC purchase in households, smaller towns and cities as witnessed over the last few quarters, continued to be steadfast. Aggressive pricing by the PC vendors has also helped improve the PC penetration, especially in the households and the SME segments.

MAIT's Industry Performance Review - ITOPs, conducted by the leading market research firm IMRB (Indian Market Research Bureau), is bi-annual and aims to address the hardware sector's efforts to manage the business environment, gauge the market potential and consumer trends. The module to monitor the Industry performance every quarter alternates with the half-yearly review, using the supply side estimation model involving data collection from the top IT vendors and leading channel players. This round of the quarterly study (October-December 2005-06) involved data collation from the major vendors and around 400 resellers/vendors in the top sixteen metros in India. The quarterly review covers the market size estimation for Desktop PCs, Notebooks, Servers and Peripherals – Printers and UPS.

The Desktop market grossed 9.67 lakh units in Q3/2005-06, a growth of 5 per cent over Q3/2004-05 (Y-o-Y). Although it is 30 per cent lower than the sales in Q2/2004-05 (JAS) (sequential), sales are expected to be buoyant in JFM as IT sales peak in the last Quarter (JFM) of the financial year.

As per the MAIT-IMRB study the Assembled PCs – the smaller lesser known regional brands and unbranded systems, accounted for 38 per cent of the PC sales in Q3/2005-06, while the proportion of the branded PCs was 62 per cent. MNC brands accounted for 34 per cent of the market while the Indian brands accounted for the rest 28 per cent.

The findings of the MAIT-IMRB Quarterly Study for Q1/2005-06 are indicative of the following significant trends in buying and usage patterns:

• In the Desktop market, in the Business Segment, it was primarily the Banks, Financial Institutions, Insurance companies, educational institutes, IT sector and IT related companies that were the lead consumers; while in the household segment, reduced prices coupled with applications for 'entertainment' and 'education' have fuelled the market. The households market that witnessed a slight slow down in the earlier quarters has once again become vibrant.
  
  
• Notebook sales touched 125,000 units recording 93 per cent y-o-y growth and 67 per cent sequential growth. The high growth in Notebook consumption can be attributed to the drop in notebook prices and the additional benefit of mobility & space management. With notebooks now being available at sub Rs30,000 prices, they are increasingly finding their way into the homes and SMEs. High consumption in corporates, IT companies, financial institutes and the government however continues to drive the Notebook consumption.
  
  
• Server consumption in the first-quarter of 2005-06 was in excess of 14,400 units. With increased investments in Corporates, especially manufacturing and retail, server consumption is likely to accelerate in the forthcoming quarters.
  
  
• The printer market continued to be vibrant. Compared to the same period last year, consumption of laser printers grew by 91 per cent, dot-matrix printer (DMP) by 2 per cent and that of inkjet by 3 per cent.
  
  
• The UPS market has shown substantial increase in demand. Consumption of UPS witnessed an increase of 68 per cent on Y-o-Y basis and 135 per cent on sequential basis.