The MAIT report on Q3 Indian IT industry’s performance and the outlook for 2008-09 Indian IT market was very reassuring, in the sense that the sale of PCs stood at 7.3 million units – the same number as of last year. I do not know what theoretically it implies – positive or negative, but the figure must lift the spirit of channel partners.
There was a lot of scepticism about clocking the last year’s figure – and still the partners have done it again.
The MAIT report for H1 2008-09 also makes an interesting reading. If anyone cares to leaf through this document, there is a mention of the number of active Internet users, which has increased to 7.61 million (76.1 lakh) in only September 2008, while the figure was 6.43 million (64.3 lakh) units in September 2007, taking the number of Internet users to over 54 million in the country. The statistics further say: Internet penetration in the top 22 cities was forty-four per cent among businesses and twenty-two per cent among households. The business segment accounts for twenty-eight per cent of India’s total active Internet entities and households account for the remaining seventy-two per cent, which is a positive sign for the Indian market and an attraction for the MNCs to invest in India.
There are many things happening at a time. The number of SMEs and SoHos is growing apace fuelling the growth of Internet penetration. The traditional businesses are aggressively adopting Internet as a tool for their business growth and the home segment is investing in Internet heavily.
Internet is actually driving the PC penetration in homes. Consumers are keen to invest in PCs to work from home or communicate with their friends, colleagues and associates. As such, the Indian workers are the most hardworking people in the world. They do not actually shy away from devoting their leisure time at home for official work. Secondly, parents are buying PCs to connect Internet for their children’s future. There is also scope for PC penetration as the IPTV connectivity is moving to homes, which will help PCs to become ubiquitous.
In this backdrop, two per cent reduction in CENVAT (excise duty/CVD) is also another feather in the cap of the Indian IT market. So, the net result is that we may be down a bit, but not out.
Sanjay Mahapatra
Editor
