India laptop market to only grow with new brands: Lenovo
New Delhi, June 10 (IANS) As new brands like Xiaomi and Honor gear up to launch their first products in the thin and light notebook segment, leading player Lenovo on Wednesday said that new entrants will only help the laptop market grow.
The notebook market in India currently is around six-seven million unit sales per year — 50 per cent consumer notebooks and 50 per cent commercial notebooks. Consumer notebook accounts for around 3.3 million to 3.6 million units and one of the most popular segments is thin and lightweight devices.
Rahul Agarwal, CEO and MD, Lenovo India told IANS that the company always welcome news brands.
“When new brands come to the market, they do bring some impact but it depends upon consumers how they react to those brands because they are generally loyal towards brands which are known for their performance in a particular segment,” Agarwal emphasised.
Lenovo India said it is confident to stand against the upcoming competition.
“The consumers first need to be convinced of what is new and different for them to buy. We as a brand are placed well in terms of supply chain as well as research and development,” Agarwal said.
The overall India traditional PC market (desktops, notebooks and workstations) declined by -16.7 per cent year-over-year (YoY) in the first quarter of 2020 with 1.8 million shipments, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). HP led the market with 28.2 per cent share, followed by Dell Technologies (25.9 per cent) and Lenovo (20 per cent).
According to Agarwal, other than high-end laptops, most of the laptops used to be thick and heavy couple of years back and Lenovo was first to introduce thin and light laptops in the mainstream category (Rs 35,000-Rs 45,000).
“Earlier, an Indian user needed to spend more money to buy thin laptops but that is no more the case,” said Agarwal.
Lenovo sees fresh demand coming from school and college-going population as classes are online amid the lockdown period and may remain the same for the most part of the year.
“As schools are providing online classes, most of the people need more than one device at home. This will boost demand for good, sturdy laptops,” Agarwal told IANS.
–IANS
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