The Hindu Business Line : Dealers look to sops for home PC sales

IN an extremely price-sensitive market, computer dealers are irked by `misleading advertisements' about branded personal computers being available for throwaway rates.

"The buzz about PCs being available for Rs 10,000 is really not true. HCL has positioned its one-GHz (Giga Hertz) processor PC at Rs 12,990, which is the least price point. Both the hardware and software is resource-hungry. Even to load the education software for kids you will need higher configuration.

The combined cost of a monitor and hard disk is over Rs 7,000. In such a scenario, how can the PC be priced at Rs 10,000?" Mr R. Senthil Kumar, Director, Ipcom Systems Private Ltd, argued. He said that the low-end PC sales had almost come to a halt. He attributed this to "misleading advertisements".

This Intel dealer told Business Line that the home PC market penetration was still pathetic in India when compared to China.

"Our penetration in the home segment is not even 20 per cent of that of China. While the computer related employment potential is huge we are not cashing in on the opportunity," he said.

According to him, housewives craved for a PC to earn that extra buck, but ITES opportunities such as legal or medical transcription or even data entry jobs have not taken off in the right direction to enable the housewives to work from home. "There are cases of women working from home, but the volume is relatively low." This sector (the PC dealers) is hoping that the Finance Minister would spring surprises in the coming Budget, which could trigger computer-related employment opportunities.

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