While the IT software industry still grapples with a slowdown which shows no apparent signs of recovery in near future, here comes more bad news and this time from the hardware front. The Indian desktop PC market has registered a negative growth rate of 11 per cent this fiscal over the previous year, grossing a sale figure of just 16.7 lakh units. PC sales had clocked a growth of 34 per cent in the fiscal 2000-01 over 1999-00. Revealing these findings in its Industry Performance Review for 2001-02, MAIT, the apex hardware body, said that the recessionary trends in the economy in general has adversely impacted the domestic hardware market. Although the first quarter of this fiscal has not seen any significant pickup in sales, the second half is expected to see a pickup of eight per cent. As per the MAIT-IMRB study, the assembled PCs accounted for 46 per cent of the PC sales in 2001-02, a decline from 53 per cent of the previous year. While the MNC brands made further inroad with a robust performance grabbing almost 35 per cent marketshare, up from 27 per cent in 2000-01. The Indian brands still have a long way to go, having been able to capture just about 19 per cent of the market share. India’s active internet entities also increased by 15 per cent to 1.29 million in March 2002 from 1.12 million in March 2001. ‘‘The number of active internet entities increased to 1.29 million in March 2002 indicating an increase of 15 per cent over March 2001. The business segment now accounts for 48 per cent of the total active internet subscribers and households account for the remaining,’’ Mait executive director Vinnie Mehta told reporters here while addressing a press meet. The penetration of internet amongst businesses grew 39 per cent from 36 per cent earlier, while a marginal increase led to 11 per cent penetration in households.
