2. The year 2012-13 has been another year with uncertainties and
downtrends globally. Indian economy has also slowed down in spite of
being one of the most promising and developing economies. Beyond
all these economic forces certain industries exhibited growth above
industry average. For example, As NASSCOM state, IT-ITeS industry grew
at 16% and for the first time touched the mark of 100 billion USD in
revenue. Though the main chunk of this 100 billion USD is contributed
by the software and BPO, the remaining is amount contributed by
hardware supplies. This low contribution by Indian computer hardware
industry is because of the dominance of China, Malaysia, Taiwan,
South Korea and etc.
Placing the computer hardware industry under the spotlight, the Data
by IDC says that the Indian PC market has grown against the negative
trend across the globe.
The article read, "Overall PC shipments for calendar year 2012 stood at
11 million units resulting in a year-on-year growth of 3.5 percent over
2011, according to IDC. Despite a drag on overall IT spending, the
growth in the India PC market was driven by special projects like
ELCOT and a spurt in consumer demand for notebooks. "
From the standpoint of "Business marketing" we might have to focus
more on the industry's business/commercial market (Leaving out the
consumer market). This focus on business market is also interesting
because of the huge amount of the revenue it gives to the industry.
Just to quote a sample, Out of the 2.23 Million notebooks sold in 2012,
One entity called Elcot in Tamilnadu made order for 9,05,000
notebooks.
But the sad part is, A study on the commercial PC business market by
Ramdas S, CRN says, "The market saw a negative dip of 1.5 percent
compared to 2011 when the total commercial PC market was
estimated at 5.9 million and is expected to slide further"
Restraining forces of the business market:
Though there are big player like IBM's Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Acer,
Dell and others in the business with all the resources required. The
sluggishness prevails due to various factors like,
• Slashing of IT budgets by small businesses and corporates: The
global economic conditions are making them work on cost
advantage with low margins. Thus the big corporates are not
ready to spend much on anything due to the low budgets they
are forced to work on.
3. • The lack of need to update the technology: Technology and
products offered by the industry has not changed drastically in
recent times so the need for change is not felt by the customers.
• Increase in the other forms of devices like tables and
smartphones: The technology convergence has happened.
More than computers the tablets are efficient for mails,
presentations, power consumptions, space and more. Thus the
trend is shifting towards the tablets
• Concept of BYOD (Bring your own devices): Organization have
employed a new technique to cut down on their cost by asking
the employees to bring their own computers and notebooks to
the workplace.
Drivers of the business market:
The import bill for electronic goods is predicted to the bigger than
the oil import bill by 2020 if a domestic ecosystem for promoting
manufacturing is not developed.
• Electronics Manufacturing Clusters Scheme (EMCs): The union
cabinet has recently approved the proposal for the Electronics
Manufacturing Clusters Scheme (EMCs), which will provide
financial assistance and guidance for manufacturers.
• Software Technology Parks of India (STPI): The effective
functioning of these parks as association are huge potential
customers of computer hardware.
• People employed: There are about 25 lakhs people working in
the IT industry alone. Where most of the individuals will do their
days to day work on a piece of hardware.
• Computerization of industries: Most the industries in India are
computerizing their firms. Even the government of India is
implementing e-governance effectively.
Thus by making a brief study on the computer hardware industry
(Personal computer and Notebooks) we were able to find the above-
mentioned points along with the restraining and driving forces. These
mentioned points along with the dropping growth rates shows the
signals of a matured market. This fascinating fact that the computer
hardware industry has stagnated, makes the group more interested to
learn more about the industry under the business marketing context
and study the industry’s reaction to various marketing concepts and
monitor the future.
