Record buying of Notebooks by Enterprises, credit goes to Remote working: IDC

The countrywide lock down forced everyone to adjust to a new norm - work from home, resulting in strong demand for notebooks as enterprises rushed to ensure business continuity by providing its workforce the required infrastructure to work at home.

Most IT services, global enterprises, and consulting companies placed large orders for notebook PCs. This led to an all-time high of enterprise notebook purchases with shipments growing by 105.5% YoY in 2Q20.

As a result, enterprises reduced desktop buying and even converted a few orders to notebooks. SMBs also increased their procurement of notebooks with relatively moderate growth of 12.1% YoY in 2Q20.

“The demand for notebooks exceeded expectations with most of the vendors exiting the quarter with minimum inventory. Despite the supply and logistics challenges in the first half of the quarter, companies executed most of the large orders in 2Q20. Also, many companies shifted their employees to notebooks for the first time; this change is surely going to alter their procurement strategy in the long term with a mix of in-office and remote workforce becoming a reality for many organizations,” says Bharath Shenoy, Market Analyst, PC Devices, IDC India.

The consumer segment had a relatively small quarter since the market was operational for just 45 days due to countrywide lock down in the first half of the quarter. However, strong demand from e Learning was able to cover the gap to some extent. The overall consumer segment saw a YoY decline of 21% but was able to recover from the previous quarter’s low with 3.3% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) growth in 2Q20. Online buying played an important role in this quarter; as a result, vendors shipped almost one-third of their PCs to online channels.

“When it comes to new growth opportunities, the demand for online learning is still largely untapped and encompasses huge potential. To unlock this big segment, brands would need to be more innovative in addressing the specific challenges related to e Learning. It would require cross-platform and learning ecosystem partnerships to onboard first-time users,” concludes Singh.