While forecasts across the globe have been rather low for the growth and adoption of PCs and notebooks, India displays a positive trend. We will see notebooks becoming the first choice for many PC buyers this year and there will be emphasis on certain fea¬tures such as WiFi, big screen size, higher download speeds as well as mobility. Netbooks will make their presence felt and those who are looking at basic access to the Internet will choose them over the normal PCs. Longer battery life will also be an important factor. 2008 was an important year for the consumer segment in India, creating a huge market for players in this segment. Some of the key trends driving this market are the focus on mobility and personalisation.

The number of business and IT professionals is also growing fast and the companies are well prepared to tap into this opportunity. The need today is for machines that
are thin, light and easy to carry around and offer high security features. The SME
segment is also growing, which means demand for more hardware, along with software, to cater to their needs. As 2008 winds down, Dell is well positioned across
the board to take share away from its competitors with its strategy of meeting customer needs, reducing opera¬tional expenses and leveraging its traditional strengths to help customers hone their competitive edge. Trends that will help Dell add value to its customers in 2009 are iSCSI-based storage, embedded virtualisation, data centre efficiency and cloud computing.