JOIN US Asserting that India’s tablet market is just “scratching the surface” in terms of usability beyond mere entertainment and consumption, Intel’s India sales head has said that providing hardware that has a direct impact on education or the livelihoods of India’s technology users can help dispel the “myth” of the tablets being price sensitive.
“China’s low-cost tablets have done a good job in terms of making a lot of people use tablets. However, people are realising now that there’s more to technology than Facebook and Twitter. They want to use such devices to get better jobs, better education or reserve tickets. This is just beginning to happen,” said Intel India MD for sales and marketing Debjani Ghosh, adding that the need to use devices beyond entertainment would spur growth of “personal computing” devices.
She spoke on the sidelines of an Intel event here on Thursday to introduce its recent announcements on fourth generation chips which the company said will power mobile, tablet convertibles and desktops.
The chips will power devices across pricepoints from the premium Ultrabook and other devices based on its 22-nm Silvermont microarchitecture. With a major emphasis on touch, the biggest advantage the new chips can offer to two-in-one and other smaller form factors is the extended battery life. Intel says that the new generation chips boast of "50 per cent" improvement in battery life.
Along with this, Ghosh said that building in customised features like local language and enabling people to “earn an extra dollar a day” would make the new form factors more attractive. “As India sales head, my concern is to develop better usage models comprising local language, touch and gesture-based interfaces,” she said.
According to figures, there are 40 ultrabook models on offer from various OEMs in India, with devices like Asus FonePad (a crossbreed between phone and tablet costing nearly Rs 16,000) being touted as the kind of models that would occupy the shelves of retailers in coming months.