Contributed by Ravi & Pradeep

It is old news that India is one of the fastest growing markets for the Personal Computer. For a developing economy it is also very interesting that a lot of this growth has been predicted not just in our urban pockets but even in the rural areas. The common Indian villager will be introduced with a level of connectivity and information access which he has never known before. But the February 2007 report of Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology on the current and forecasted trends of the Indian PC industry brings to light another incredible data – laptop sales have been increasing at twice the rate of the desktop!

This difference is so much so that there are estimates that the annual laptop sales in India will cross the desktop sales in the next 5 years. Some even put this prediction for the year 2010, just 3 years from now! Is it genuinely achievable, that a majority of India Inc’s introduction to the computer age will be straight through the Notebook computers?

The CAGR for desktop sales over the last seven years was 27% and the CAGR for laptops in the same duration was an astounding 80%. And the trend has been shifting heavily towards laptops in the near past. Last years desktop sales increased by 19% whereas laptop growth almost touched a 100%! In terms of region specific parameters, the south Indian cities are heavily buying laptops over desktops now- something that is expected but at least reiterates the fact that the next stage of development of a desktop market is that of the laptop.

But before you go on and buy those Dell shares, check this out. In spite of the rapid growth the base volumes are still not enough to make the best of these predictions come true. Last year (2006-07) seven times more desktops were sold as compared to laptops. Also, the average price of a mid range desktop has reached close to INR 18,000 whereas a corresponding laptop still costs close to INR 45,000. So, when you evaluate the expected rapid growth of PCs, reliant in a big way on the upcoming non urban markets, we feel that it is unlikely that the laptop will overtake the desktop in our country any time soon.