India has 1.3 billion people. They bought 3.4m PCs in Q3

India clocked up its most prolific PC-buying quarter for seven years, with 3.4 million new devices shipped in the country between July and September 2020. Analyst firm IDC says the consumer PC segment recorded its biggest quarter ever, with two million devices shipped and 41.7 percent year-on-year growth and 167.2 percent …

[Raj]

Economics matter

The authors reporting is shallow. There are two major factors here:

- PC sales in India reflect the level of disposable income with respect to purchase cost. India has 1.2 billion cellphone subscribers, with approximately 750 million unique users. Thus almost every adult has a cellphone now. There are 500 million smartphones in use. This means income levels support universal basic cellphone adoption and 40% can do low to mid range smartphones. PCs are still multiples of this and incremental value add is not established.

- The high PC price is partly taxes. The government is pushing for local manufacture. It is better economic sense to foster consumption driven by a domestic base, rather than serially import from China. This effectively does not apply to UK because wage levels don’t justify it. Given this, it is no surprise the author doesn’t consider this - it is standard cognitive dissonance to apply western economic imperative anywhere else too.

[IGotOut]

Re: Economics matter

So you are saying having high taxes to support a unaffordable product is a good thing?

Would it not make more sense to buy in the cheaper product, allow the population to become better educated, more informed and more literate THEN worry about expensive own grown kit?

[Raj]

Re: Economics matter

Higher taxes on an assembled finished item with a significant import content is a good thing - especially when there's a parallel government initiative that offers tax incentives to the manufacturers of those components to instead manufacture in India.

This is the same as the duty structure on cars - the greater the local manufacturing fraction, the lesser the overall tax impact. Fully assembled cars continue to be heavily taxed, with SKD and CKDs being subjected to lesser taxes.

I daresay access to education in IT isn't exactly something India has a crying shortage of . The Indian IT worker is ubiquitous and a very common target of western malignment. Last year India had services/IT exports of $220 billion. That's about half of what our entire GDP used to be twenty years ago.

This article would actually be meaningful if it discussed real technical and economic background here instead of saying A buys more than B, with non further context at all. Either the author knows nothing about the topic or is simply trolling. Either way it doesn't look good for him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Economics matter

"- PC sales in India reflect the level of disposable income with respect to purchase cost. "

I'm not sure this is true - later adopters of tech (so Asia, Africa) tended to jump to phones as they became accessible and for most people smartphones do everything a PC does. Similarly places in Asia and Africa went straight to mobile wireless and just leapfrogged fixed wired broadband.

"Given this, it is no surprise the author doesn’t consider this - it is standard cognitive dissonance to apply western economic imperative anywhere else too."

Aaah, bee in bonnet time - yes, there is a gulf of cultural differences between India and the western world - I've described these in great detail to the Indian fraud shops who ring me to let me know that 'My PC is slowing down the internet' and I need to pay lots of money to get it 'fixed'.

[Triggerfish]

Re: Economics matter

Smartphones are nice and mobile, that means you can get out from the house. One thing I have noticed in SEA at least is the fact that space is a premium, you may not have a bedroom to call your own or even another room in the house you can go to, families might be living in something small bedsit sized. But with a mobile you can get out and still have most of the major uses of a laptop (as in what the average home user uses it for, messaging, facebook, browsing etc).

Everyone seems to live outdoors in SEA with just the rooms for sleeping, Unless you need a laptop for work then people probably just don't need them. A teenager where I am living gets £1.15/hr for waiting in a restaurant that expects them to be bilingual to a decent degree. A laptop is a big expenditure for not much return for most.

[Raj]

Re: Economics matter

It's not a question of late adoption. India is an early adopter of tech as an economic sector, first having established itself during the Y2K preparatory work a generation ago. *Despite* PC sales / penetration in India being what it is, the country has been able to build such a large economic sector.

India is different from the rest of developing Asia/Africa in that it has an enormous IT/BPO services industry in absolute terms, built over 25 years. This sector generates over $200 billion in exports each year. Covid has hardly affected it, with YTD exports just -5% vs prior year. There isn't another developing country with a workforce and entrenched scale that compares.

"I've described these in great detail to the Indian fraud shops who ring me to let me know that 'My PC is slowing down the internet' and I need to pay lots of money to get it 'fixed'"

Yeah I get it. The only thing you ever think about with India and IT is a collection of stereotypes and anecdotes about what annoy you. The apathy is mutual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Economics matter

"It's not a question of late adoption. "

It is: https://nrinews24x7.com/dell-addresses-challenges-around-low-pc-adoption-india/

The reality is India is a low-paid, third-world country with low literacy rates, high poverty and precarious infrastructure. According to some random internet fact 82,3% or people in India live on less than $5.50 a day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty

It is thus not a place to sell a load of hardware.

"The only thing you ever think about with India and IT is a collection of stereotypes and anecdotes...."

Nope, learned from personal experience. And 'anecdotes' such as these which blight the lives of the vulnerable:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-51753362

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/09/customers-bt-targeted-telephone-scammers-india.html

https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/03/vigilante-hacks-indian-call-centre-scamming-people-313000-month-12338944/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50117796

https://www.zdnet.com/article/after-microsoft-complaints-indian-police-arrest-tech-support-scammers-at-26-call-centers/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/18/phone-scam-india-call-centres

https://www.easterneye.biz/cctv-exposes-scammers-in-indian-call-centres/

https://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2020/jan/10/indian-national-pleads-guilty-to-operating-call-centres-to-scam-americans-2087709.html

https://thewire.in/business/indian-call-centre-scam

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-37564408

Maybe its a good idea to limit your access to tech, eh?

[Raj]

Re: Economics matter

An impressive effort at dumping your Google search result without bothering to read the post you're responding to or to understand what the post contains. At least you learned cut and paste. Well done.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Economics matter

And a less than impressive effort at responding to salient facts about your country. You might want to try googling 'ad hominem fallacy' - you could learn something.

A few more years with access to decent technology and you might get the hang of this. ironic your username is Raj, if you'd stuck with it you might not have descended to the third world - how is it down there these days? Neck aching looking up all the time?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the fact remains that even with strong demand, many Indians can’t afford PCs.

I'll be brutally honest: their loss, my gain (re. teleworking from home). And, likewise, their gain, my loss (sooner later than later).

[NeilPost]

Re: But the fact remains that even with strong demand, many Indians can’t afford PCs.

So sounds like a great market for a 24” screen and a Raspberry Pi4.

Infrastructure issues aside outside the gates of gleaming tech shed parks...

[Blackjack]

So...

With taxes included how much would one of those 100 dollars micro PCs cost in India?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple can shrink an entire chipset onto one die, maybe PC laptops can do likewise, and help make them cheaper. Nobody should ever die for a laptop again.

There are already several laptop makers in India, so they just need more people to buy / donate them: https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/gadgets/indian-laptop-companies-made-in-india.html