New Delhi, June 12: India is expected to have 179 million PCs by 2015.

According to research firm IDC, the total number of PCs in India has already crossed 22 million on March 31, while technology research firm Forrester has forecast that India would add another 157 million PCs by 2015.

Analysts said this would be possible because of a growing technology-savvy population as well as falling prices.

Piyush Pushkal, manager (PC research), IDC India, said, “Affordability has pulled both the supply and demand sides together for the past few quarters in the notebook PC market. Educational institutions as well as businesses are the major contributors.”

“There would be more than one billion PCs in use by the end of 2008. A rapid growth in emerging markets and expansion to untapped markets would take the numbers to over two billion by 2015,” said Simon Yates, researcher and author of the Forrester report — Worldwide PC Adoption Forecast, 2007 to 2015.

Come 2015, two out of every seven people in the world will have a personal computer with India, China, Russia and Brazil emerging as the fastest growing markets, said Yates.

IDC’s India Quarterly PC Tracker for the first quarter of 2007-08 pegs the Indian client PC (desktops and notebooks combined) base at 22 million — a figure that has more than doubled from 9.5 million in 2003. Of the total client PC base for 2006-07, notebooks (or laptops) registered an 85.6 per cent growth since their average selling value dropped by 12.2 per cent for the year.

Desktops grew 11 per cent year-on-year and registered a 3.6 per cent increase in their average selling value.

The performance was contributed largely by buoyant commercial notebook shipments that grew on account of a robust demand from large, small and medium enterprises and education segments.

During the first quarter of 2007-08, the overall client PC market grew 15.9 per cent over the corresponding period last year in terms of unit shipments. Desktop PC shipments registered a growth of 6.3 per cent, while notebook PCs showed a growth of 73.1 per cent during the first quarter of 2007-08 over the corresponding period last year.

“There is one PC for every 50 Indians today. This is a watershed era in the history of the Indian PC market,” said Kapil Dev Singh, country manager, IDC India.