He expects sales to pick up going into the latter half of the year as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) launch more such devices.

“It is a pivotal moment for the industry, quite similar to the phone industry pivoting from feature phones to smartphones. We believe that around 20 per cent of the consumer market will be AI PCs by the end of this year. As we progress, adoption will be much faster,” he said.

According to Sikka, AI-enabled PCs offer consumers a host of benefits over normal PCs. These features are expected to rise as adoption increases.

“Currently, use cases include features like hyper-personalisation – be it drafting emails or gauging downtime of users. Secondly, AI PCs are able to carry out a lot of tasks on the local PC, without relying on Cloud. A lot of data thus remains on the host PC which improves efficiency. Third is improved security, since a lot of the data remains of the host PC,” he added.

The PC maker had, in June last year, declared plans to invest $1 billion over three years in expansion of infrastructure solutions. This is in partnership with tech majors like Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel and Qualcomm, in a bid to accelerate AI deployment for businesses around the world.

“Some of the long-term bets we have taken, in the form of gaming and AI PCs, are very promising. We are seeing a lot of growth across the $500-800 and over $800 price bands. Most of these are our gaming and AI PCs. Going forward, we are confident that a large part of the market growth will come from gaming and AI PCs,” he said.

The company is also expecting its gaming portfolio to drive much of its growth this financial year.

“The current market growth for gaming is pegged at 15-20 per cent. We are aiming to grow our gaming portfolio twofold of the market growth in the current financial year. We have witnessed a 400 per cent growth in sales of our gaming portfolio, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 50 per cent over the last five years,” Sikka said.

Sikka added that the company’s two gaming sub-brands – Legion and LOQ – have seen strong traction among Indian gamers. “People interested in content creation and high-performance laptops are also looking at gaming PCs,” he said.

India’s PC market — desktops, notebooks, and workstations — shipped 3.07 million units in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024. This is up 2.6 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC).

A year ago in Q1 2023, Lenovo stood second behind market leader HP in terms of share.

While Lenovo’s shipments declined just 1.3 per cent Y-o-Y in Q1 this year, the brand was pipped by both Dell and Acer. These now occupy the second and third spots, in terms of overall market share.

This year, while Lenovo was second behind HP in the consumer segment with a share of 13.5 per cent, it stood fourth in the commercial segment with a share of 16.3 per cent, IDC data showed.

The vendor struggled in the government segment but fared well in the small and medium businesses category.

“The decline in market share is more of an inventory correction. We wanted to make sure that, as we enter this financial year, we have the right levels of inventory across the board. Our strategy remains the same, going forward,” Sikka said.

First Published: Jun 16 2024 | 10:41 PM IST