Intel India looks at ways to push IT consumption

Computer chip maker Intel’s priority in the Indian market for the next few years would be to push technology consumption, said Debjani Ghosh, vice-president, sales and marketing group, and managing director, South Asia.

She said India had prowess in supporting the global information technology industry but the use of technology for day-to-day use, which supports growth, is very poor in the country.

Digital literacy is the need of the hour and Intel in India is playing a role of market creator, she said. “We believe in the potential of India, especially with the new government in place and the strong technology vision they have. We believe India is on the right track. We are very committed to work with the government and with the eco-system to see how we can acclearate the domestic techonology adoption,” she said.

On their focus here, she said, “As far as technology and product base is concerned, we believe there is room for growth for PCs (personal computers).” She noted only 10 per cent of the population had access to these. Innovation in solutions or software space, such as speech recognition in PCs, so that the user could ‘speak’ to it in the local language, would be required for the non-urban, non-English speaking customers, where the new users would primarily come from. “More and more users are going to be non-English and non-literate. One has to make the computer very intuitive and that is where hardware and software innovation is required.”

In devices, there will be a major consolidation in terms of segments. There are presently a large number of these in smartphones, tablets, etc. “You will see a consolidation across these devices and you are going to see segmentation through screen size, who uses what.”

In the Indian market, there are extremely cheap devices but with pathetic performance and high-end devices with good performance but at a high price. The mid-point gap is where Intel could bring good performance at affordable prices with its partners, she said.

Another area of focus was going to be data centres and cloud services, which offered “tremendous opportunities” the way e-commerce was picking up and services, especially government services, were. The company would also looking at the ‘internet of things’ as a focus area, as it was ‘critical for smart infrastructure’.

On the smartphone business, she said, “We have a very focused strategy and we work with only a very few people. We are not a broad player in smartphones and that’s by choice. We work with very focused partners, such as Asus and Lenova.”

“Growth in India will be in five-eight inch (screens) and Intel is absolutely in there and we are going to be there with lots of partners,” she added.According to earlier reports, the company is also working on coming up with wearable gadgets, expected to grab the market in the future.