Braving a somewhat stagnant demand for software services in the traditional US market, India's software export revenues registered a 30 per cent rise in dollar terms to cross $8 billion mark in 2002.

Back home, with an overall growth of nine per cent, the domestic market stood at Rs 23,774 crore ($4953 million) in 2002, as users in government, banking and finance, education and telecom sectors emerged as major spenders.

According to a report released by IT analyst Skoch Consultancy on Wednesday, over half the revenues came from the 1.8 million personal computers and other hardware sold during the period in reference.

The global technology slump notwithstanding, the Indian IT industry showed signs of resilience to record an overall upsurge in almost every category.

"The industry is poised to maintain a rising graph in the current year also as all other segments including training, consultancy, systems integration continued to perform positively," the report said.

However Internet penetration was a casualty of an all round poor quality of service while networking suffered due to the stagnating investments in Internet infrastructure.

On the software front, the stagnant demand for software services in the US market failed to dampen the performance of Indian software exports, which increased by 30 per cent to $8 billion during 2002.

A significant contribution coming from the IT enabled services fired the export performance of the software industry, it said.

Regarding a shift of the PC market from metros to non-metros, Skoch said that non-metros were expected to overtake the metros with a marketshare of 52 per cent by 2003-end.

During the period in reference, PCs sold in the education segment totalled 89,852 units in 2002 compared to 63,054 units in 2001. Segments such as banking and financial services, telecom and education together had contributed 18 per cent in the total market size.

The overall volume-wise growth of PCs was 14 per cent, selling about 1.8 million units in 2002, although the cost still remained a critical issue in India.

"An entry level basic PC configuration is still exorbitantly priced at about Rs 35,000 despite a fall in average unit price. That is evident, as volumes have increased by 14 per cent, while the total value has shown a rise of 11 per cent," the reports said.

While the high end non-PC servers had a very small percentage share, the user preference for PC server shows that India is a price sensitive market.

First time users and small businesses continue to be the leading buyers as they have been buying about 40 per cent of PCs during the last four years.

Small and medium enterprises users too have been big spenders accounting for another 30 per cent. Corporates and government organisations are the other major categories with a combined share of 28 per cent during the last year.

The Skoch report said mainly because enterprise buying was far lower compared to SMEs and home categories, a clear preference was indicated for assembled PCs that were cheaper.

"They have enjoyed over 60 per cent share as compared to Indian brands with only 17 per cent and those produced by MNCs with about 22 per cent," the reports said adding MNC brands had dropped their share from 28 per cent last year owing mainly to the hiccups of post merger phase of HP and Compaq.

Skoch expressed hope that the new HP would bounce back over the next couple of years, and Samsung would also emerge as a strong branded PC player given the fact that it controlled the bulk of the component base.

The value-wise share of PCs had increased by over 11 per cent accruing revenues of Rs 7,664 crore (Rs 76.64 billion). "In fact the value has surpassed the 2000 level, which was considered to be the boom period," the report pointed out.

Peripherals have also witnessed a matching demand with printers crossing one million unit mark for the first time during 2002. Laser and Inkjet machines collected a combined share of 70 per cent, which is considered to be a healthy growth as office and enterprise printing requirements had gone up.

"Applications such as bills printing, passbook printing in the service sector industry including banking and telecom have increased printing requirements," it said adding Canon and Samsung would make significant gains in the printer market over the next few years.