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Prices on a hike
Most MNC’s have hiked up PC prices after the recent hike in the price of microchips. A PC in India costs more than four times its counterpart in the West. Intel recently announced a possible drop in the price of microprocessors. This is expected to offset the hike in the price of microchips. MNC’s should have waited for Intel’s announcement before hiking PC prices. A hike, at a time when the PC market is going through a lean phase, is bound to discourage a lot of potential buyers. We can’t afford that since the PC penetration ratio is already minuscule.

Sridharan Ayengar
Bangalore

Services to products
As always, going through Express Computer has been a pleasure. The views expressed in your column ‘Services to Products’ by Naveen Kudroli of Delhi, which has also been shared by the president of Nasscom, Kiran Karnik, indicated that there is a huge untapped domestic market in India, particularly within the Government sector. However, according to Karnik, companies need to move up the value chain and should also offer quality products to customers.

Micro Technologies focuses on bringing out quality products for various day to day applications. Principally, these cover office desk systems, personnel management system, billing system, civic amenities management system, asset management information system and so on. Perhaps, Micro Technologies is among the few companies, which can today boast of an array of products numbering 50. Our latest product, the Micro IAS System (Micro Internet Access Security System), offers total security for Web-based transactions.

C V Subramaniam
Senior Associate
Micro Technologies (India)

Networked India
Companies like Reliance have been laying optic fibre cables across the length and breadth of the country. But the whole purpose of the exercise is lost if this is not made available to the common man at affordable rates. Availability of huge amounts of bandwidth doesn’t necessarily translate into utilisation of the same. The recent furore over the hike in satellite channel prices is a case in point. The home consumer is very price conscious and so will not be willing to pay the heavy price, even if it means faster Net accessibility.

Vineet Desai
Mumbai

Going going gone!
This is with reference to the article ‘Reverse auctions help cut procurement costs’ (EC January 21, 2002). The article provided a detailed analysis of the whole process. Lack of proper knowledge about the system has been the main reason why many companies have been reluctant to adopt these new technologies. It would be helpful if you could also provide the contact details of the companies which provide such facilities.

Ashok Vijaykar
Pune

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ConnectCapital’s India fund corpus at $60-75 million
ConnectCapital is likely to announce closure of its India-specific fund soon. Market sources peg the corpus at anywhere between $60 to 75 million, with Singapore Technologies reportedly committing about $35 million to the fund. The firm is reportedly in the final stages of closing the fund and the Singapore Technologies investment. Names of the other investors could not be ascertained though Insight Capital is understood to have committed some money to the fund.

Financial Express

Microchip price cuts may take the sting out of dearer memory
PC prices look set for a roller-coaster ride in the near future following the recent increase in the cost of memory chips and an anticipated drop in the microprocessor prices. Market sources indicate that Intel will announce price cuts on microprocessors in the next few days and the drop could offset the increased cost of memory. Experts feel that the PC prices, volatile now, will stabilise only after the new processor prices are known. Indian players like Vintron, Zenith and HCL are holding their decisions to pass on the memory price hike and waiting for the drop in the processor prices to avoid any price hike to remain competitive in the grim market conditions. However, multinational PC manufacturers like Compaq, HP and IBM that have already announced the new price lists to pass on the hike in memory cost, may also pass on some benefit to the consumers of the microprocessor cuts.

Financial Express

IT spend to go up in mining, petroleum and agribusiness
IT spend is likely to show robust growth in sectors such as petroleum, mining and agribusiness and decline in manufacturing, utilities and government, according to a survey carried out by leading IT research firm Gartner and SoundView, an investment banking firm. About 1,048 participants were polled, representing more than 20 industries and more than $35 billion in technology spending for their respective corporations. About 60 percent of the correspondents indicated increases in IT spending for 2002, while 40 percent indicated decreased spending. Petroleum and agribusiness showed the strongest gains in IT spending projected to rise about 16 percent and 10 percent respectively.

Financial Express

Domestic software market falls short of Ninth Plan target by 310 crore
The domestic software market fell Rs 310 crore short of projections for the Ninth Plan period that is drawing to a close. While the target for total software industry performance for the ‘97-02 period was Rs 1,40,850 crore, the industry is expected to aggregate revenues of Rs 1,40,540 crore-falling just short of the goal. According to the latest government data, during ‘97-00 the software industry grew at a CAGR of 52 percent. The industry upped its revenues from Rs 6,130 crore in 1996-97 to RS 37,760 crore in ‘00-01. This is expected to touch Rs 52,500 crore in ‘01-02, against the projected Rs 56,300. Between ‘97 and’00, the domestic software market has grown at a CAGR of 39 percent, from Rs 2,410 crore in ‘96-97 to Rs 9,410 crore in ‘00-01. It is expected to top Rs 12,500 crore in ‘01-02, against the target of Rs 19,800 crore.

Economic Times

eFunds unveils second call centre in Mumbai
eFunds International, the wholly owned subsidiary of the US-based eFunds Corporation is planning to scale up its operations in India. The company has started its second call centre in Mumbai. the new facility, costing around $3.5 million, is a 52,000 sq. feet call centre with a seating capacity of 700. The centre would cater to inbound and outbound tele-service activities for its clients around the globe.

Business Standard

Notebooks fail to do the lap of honour
The laptop market is one which the MNCs have in their pockets with companies like Compaq, which has a 31.4 percent market share, followed by IBM with 27 percent market share leading the way. The Japanese IT giant Toshiba is the third largest laptop seller in India with 20.2 percent market share, followed by Dell with 11.8 percent share of the market. However, the fifth largest laptop seller has a mere 3.8 percent market share. The growth of laptop sales in India continues to be sluggish. For the third quarter of ‘01, the latest quarter for which IDC has released its report, around 9,956 laptops were sold.

Economic Times

Wipro, Infosys take diverse routes to the top
Wipro and Infosys may be vying for the top spot in the capital markets, but their business model and nature of revenue streams diverge more and more every quarter. Wipro Technologies, the software services arm of Wipro, derived 51 percent of its Global IT service revenues from outsourced R&D services for the last quarter ended December ‘01. For Infosys, the biggest revenue stream remains the banking, financial services and insurance segment (BFSI), which contributes 34.2 percent, compared to 36.6 percent in the same quarter last fiscal. wipro’s telecom and inter-networking practice contributed 19 percent, while the telecom and ISP practice contributed 17 percent. The embedded systems and Internet access device practice contributed 15 percent. Compared to this , Infosys’ Insurance sector contributed 15.7 percent of the total revenues while the banking and financial services contributed 18.5 percent of the total revenues. Wipro derives bulk of its revenues from retail and utilities compared to BFSI for Infosys.

Economic Times

Sun to charge nominal fee for Star Office
Sun Microsystems will start charging nominal fees for the 6.0 version of its office productivity suite Star Office, slated to be released in end-February. Star Office was bought by Sun from Germany-based software company Star AG, one-and-a-half years ago. Till now star could be freely downloaded from Sun’s website and is also available free from the retail market. Sun has invested around $100 million in India and has set up a Sun One development centre in India. The company’s target is to achieve a revenue target of $1 billion from four countries-India, Spain, China, Brazil and Italy in the next few years.

Financial Express

AMD launches new desktop processor
AMD has announced a new desktop processor for the mainstream PC market, the 1.3GHz AMD DuronT processor, offering best-in-class performance on digital photo, audio and Internet applications. As with all AMD processors, the 1.3GHz AMD Duron processor is optimised for the Microsoft Windows XP Home and Professional operating systems and supports Double Data Rate, or DDR, memory.

Currently, more than 100 motherboard solutions are available on the market supporting the AMD Duron processor and DDR memory, offering purchasers flexibility of choice. These include offerings by Asus, Gigabyte and MSI. These motherboards are all based on the Socket A infrastructure, and offer unmatched platform stability for our AMD Duron processor commercial customers. AMD expects worldwide availability of the 1.3GHz AMD Duron processor through the system builder and direct channels.

Acer India introduces sub Rs 60,000 entry level notebooks
Leveraging its world leadership in Notebook Technology, Acer has launched a 'first time in India' sub Rs 60,000 MNC notebook at Rs 59,990. Acer's new TravelMate 212 TX mobile PC provides you with all you need to stay productive at home and at the office. The TravelMate 212 TX is an all-in-one 3 spindle mobile PC with FDD, HDD and CD ROM offering great performance and a full compliment of features at a competitive price.