After posting decent numbers for the past two quarters, the IT hardware industry believes

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2009-10 will be buoyant in terms of PC sales with increased spending from enterprises and home users. Growth could reach 7 per cent, according to trade body Mait.

“I believe for 2009-10, growth will be about 7 per cent. The PC market is certainly looking up,” Vinnie Mehta, executive director, Mait said. According to Mait, total PC sales between April 2008 and March 2009 were 67.9 lakh units, registering a decline of 7 per cent over the previous year.

Admitting 2009 was a slow year, Acer India’s chief marketing officer (CMO),

S Rajendran said, “We started realising the economic slump in November 2008, which continued through the year before we bounced back in May 2009.” Acer is projected to have closed the year with a 15 per cent growth, though the company declined to state specific volume figures.

The CMO said that the company sees good potential in e-governance projects and expects enterprise spending to go up in the second half of the year. “Though there was a dip in November-December, we see the market looking up since December last week – customer sentiment is back and we see good number of walk-ins in our retail stores,” Rajendran said.

According to market leader HP, the future growth of desktop PCs in India will be driven by tier-II and tier-III cities with an untapped SMB and consumer base along with regular buying from enterprises. Although HP didn’t share any numbers, a company official believes that the PCs are bound to occupy the place of third durable in every home.

The sectors driving growth in India are telecom, banking, financial services & insurance, IT-enabled services and manufacturing. Consumption has also picked up in non-traditional sectors like education, retail outlets, government and self-employed professionals.

HP also said that the launch of Windows 7, increased demand for touch-screen technology, faster and more pervasive broadband infrastructure, innovation in connected devices and evolution in displays will stimulate a PC refresh cycle this year.

James Rhee, executive officer-marketing for Dell’s APJ Large Enterprise Business recently told Financial Chronicle that he is seeing the beginning of a refresh/replacement cycle, especially in India. “Till now recovery in corporate PC sales was lagging behind consumer sales. We expect that to change soon with companies going in for newer systems,” he had said.