With home markets expanding to 26.4% of total personal computer (PC) sales, PC shipments in India reached over 2.2 million units in the third quarter of 2007, an increase of 19.7% over the same period in 2006, according to Gartner.

"HP continues to retain its number 1 position, constantly widening the gap with its closest competitor HCL, through a robust growth in mobile PC shipments. Lenovo, Acer and HCL, continue to out grow the market lead primarily by the strong growth in mobile PCs and by home market sales,” said Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst for Gartner's client computing group.

"The third quarter usually coincides with the festival buying season in India - the biggest consumer spending period. However, this year in spite of the festival buying season falling in Q4, consumer spending has not followed the conventional pattern, proof of which has been the aggressive retail sales of mobile PCs in the third quarter itself. Most leading mobile PC brands have reported a dominant percentage of their sales in Q3'07 coming from the consumer segment", said Chakraborti. "What is worth noting here is that the Tier II and Tier III home segment which hitherto were almost exclusively buying desk based PCs are now also opting for mobile PCs as well," he added.

India's Mobile PC sales grew 99.4% to nearly half a million in the third quarter of 2007. The desk based PC shipments grew at 7.8% to 1.72 million.