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Homes in Bangalore have the highest penetration of personal computers in India according to a survey conducted by International Data Corporation.

Bangalore ranks first with 14.8 per cent PC penetration in addressable households. Pune comes second with 14.2 per cent. These are among the 13 Indian cities that IDC surveyed.

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The main factors that contribute to the leading positions of these two cities are the presence of software parks there, higher concentration of software developers and in general, a computer savvy population.

On the other end, the survey points out that Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack have the lowest PC penetration. Here the blame can be put on low penetration of IT due to limited corporate presence. Besides, vendors in these cities lack market focus, the IDC report claims.

The overall PC penetration stood at 9.6 per cent in the survey of 5,316 households by IDC (India) across 13 cities in the country.

The home segment survey was conducted during November-December 1998.

Another interesting trend that emerged from the survey was of a strong linkage of penetration of PCs with the socio-economic class. Households were contacted from the addressable population and categorised in various classes called SEC A1, A2, B1 and B2.

There is a significant difference between PC penetration in SEC A1 and A2 households and SEC B1 and B2 households.

Of the PC owning households, about 9 per cent have access to the Internet. A significant 37 per cent of the PC owning households currently not having an Internet connection have indicated of their intention to acquire the same soon.

The Internet has also begun to emerge as a driver for PC purchase in homes.

It was observed that the Internet is primarily used for email and Web browsing. The frequency of Internet use was observed to be quite high. Nearly half of the Internet users access Internet at least once a day and the rest indicated of accessing it 2-3 times a week, the report says.

UNI

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