NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Sunday, June 12, 2005

Intel, whose chips power 80 percent of the world’s personal computers, says its role in helping consumers buy PCs for 499 rupees, or $11.45, a month will help achieve annual sales growth in India of 30 percent a year.

“India as a growing emerging market is central to Intel’s strategy,” Ketan Sampat, president of Intel India, said recently in an interview in Mumbai.

The country’s autorickshaw drivers and farmers “see the PC as giving their children economic opportunity that they never had,” he said.

Intel is advising Indian banks and PC makers on how to market loans to attract more buyers among the 100 million middle-income Indians who earn less than 6,000 rupees a month. India’s PC market is still only a third the size of China’s even though the country is home to software developers like Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services.

Intel stands to gain as India targets increasing the number of households with PCs fourfold within the next four years, to 65 of every 1,000. The country’s decisions to eliminate excise taxes on microprocessors in January 2004 and on PCs in July have already reduced the cost of personal computers by a third, Intel said. The company supplied the chips for almost 90 percent of the 3.6 million computers shipped to India last year, according to the market researcher IDC.
Story found here.