NEW DELHI: India's PC market saw a growth of 18.1% year-over-year in 2019 with shipments of 11 million units--the highest in last six years, a new report from IDC said.As per the research firm's 'worldwide quarterly personal computing device tracker, 4Q19' report, the growth in this segment was largely propelled by government-driven education projects and upgrade purchases for Windows 10 inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations.While the last quarter of the year (Q4,19) also registered a healthy 16.5% yearly growth with 2.3 million shipments, primarily due to 26.5% annual growth in the commercial segment. The consumer segment too climbed up by 4.6% yearly in Q4 shipping close to 950 thousand units after seeing decline for five straight quarters on an annual basis.Notebook PCs saw highest-ever annual shipments with a 67.7% category share in 2019. The desktop category also witnessed a 5.7% year on year growth largely driven by refreshed buying from banking and financial institutions and reached 30.7% category share for the year. HP retained the top spot as its shipments grew 8.6% from the same time a year ago in Q4,2019. However, the company remained in the 2nd position for the overall year. The growth in 4Q19 was driven by the fulfilment of few education deals and strong growth in the enterprise segment. Lenovo slipped to the second spot in 4Q19 but remained the market leader for the overall year. Lenovo’s commercial segment grew 32.1% on a yearly basis while consumer segment witnessed 13.5% annual growth in the last quarter of the year, resulting in annual growth for all four quarters of the year. Dell Technologies stayed put with its third rank during both Q4 and overall 2019. The vendor registered growth in the commercial segment driven by refresh orders from its global accounts and steady growth in the mid-market segment. However its struggle continues in the consumer segment as its shipments remain flattish, when compared to the same quarter last year, as per the data. Intel continued to be the leading processor brand with a 70.8% share in the traditional PC category even though its CPU availability shortage remained a concern point for vendors throughout the year. This slippage however gave room for AMD to enter certain segments and help vendors fill the gaps to some extent, the report suggested.It further attributed strong growth in the commercial segment to the large government education projects, Windows 10 refresh orders along with vendor initiatives to target SMEs even in the lower-tier cities and helping them with easy finance options.The commercial segment saw healthy growth in all four quarters of 2019. However, vendors struggled to achieve meaningful growth in the consumer segment despite adding more ultra-slim devices with higher processing power and optimized performance in the portfolio, the report adds.Gaming segment also saw an impressive growth as gaming based PCs grew 51.1% annually in 2019. While most vendors increased their shipments in this segment, Asus stood out with one in every four notebooks it shipped being a gaming one.“While large businesses were the volume driver, vendors invested in building new teams, exploring new channels, and educating the customers to tap the SMB segment,” said Bharath Shenoy, Market Analyst, PC, IDC India.“India’s SMB market provides a large opportunity for PC vendors in the next few years, as SMBs strive to adopt new technologies for their digital transformation journey. However, the vendors need to be more innovative to deal with the aspirations of this segment and would require a cohesive ecosystem focus to improve the infrastructure and support for small and medium businesses,” added Shenoy.“Most of the global companies and large Indian enterprises were quick in upgrading to Windows 10. However, a few sectors are still lagging and are expected to go for a refresh in the first half of 2020. This will certainly help the commercial segment to carry forward the positive momentum in H1 2020 with some residual upgrade demand coming in the next few months,” Jaipal Singh, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India said.“2019 should be seen as an exceptional year for the PC market due to the delivery of a few large education projects along with the Windows 10 refresh. In the absence of any fresh mega-deal, lingering concerns around component shortage, and supply uncertainties due to recent novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, it would be difficult for vendors to maintain this level of growth in 2020, ” Singh added.