The new chip is expected to be priced 15 to 20 per cent higher than the existing prices of P-II with a clock speed of 450 mhz, industry sources said. An entry-level multimedia PC with a P-II 350 mhz chip is priced around Rs 50,000 at present.

HCL Infosys' Frontline division will launch the top-end Beanstalk Ultima machine. To be priced at Rs 1.35 lakh, the machine will be based on a P-III 450 mhz chip and will be a delight for net surfers, claimed a HCL official. Asked if a home user could afford such a high-priced PC, he said, ``the price is high, but it is not just because of the chip. We are providing a state-of-the-art desktop with a 5x DVD ROM, 360 watt speakers, 64 BIT sound card and a 56 KBPS modem. Hence, the machinewill be at the cutting edge of technology and will protect the buyers' investment for a year at least.''

Compaq too will launch a new range of its Deskpro range of desktops for commercial segment to coincide with the P-III launch. To be priced around Rs 1.5 lakh, the entry level Deskpro EP will have a 450 mhz P-III too, along with a 10 GB hard disk, 64 MB RAM. The higher-end Deskpro EN will be launched in Asia-Pacific, but not in India.

P-III is expected to become the mainstream microprocessor by the year-end for enterprise machines after which it will find its way into home desktops. HCL will continue to sell its PCs based on P-II till November this year.

P-II is expected to be phased out by most of the larger vendors before the year-end at a maximum clock speed of 450 mhz which is the present entry speed of P-III. Though prices of P-II are not being expected to be affected immediately, once the vendors start using P-III 500 mhz by the end of this quarter, the prices might register a naturaldecline.

``P-III may not set the market on fire,'',said IDC India president Ravi Sangal, ``however, it will mark the the beginning of the end of the P-II range. Most vendors expect the slashing of P-II prices to begin sometime later this year. P-III-based machines will target the high-end desktop and corporate markets to begin with and prices will begin to fall by middle of the year,'' he added. Intel has a share of 92 per cent of the total desktop market in India, according to IDC figures.

The share of CPUs other than Intel is slightly higher at 14 per cent in the home and small office segment.