After logging back into growth mode last quarter, the world?s largest microchipmaker Intel is expecting to scale new territories in South Asia. R Sivakumar, country manager South Asia is confident that the Indian market will easily touch high teens this year as enterprises will refresh their computing infrastructure. The former worldwide director, business development for the Mobility Group at Intel is even more bullish on the connectivity boom and is excited about bold forays into mobile phone and WiMAX space. In a chat with Pragati Verma, Sivakumar spells out his strategy for India this year. Excerpts:
The Indian tech market is picking up. Are you seeing strong signs of growth too?
We do believe a combination of things will lead to the projections for the coming year. We certainly have great hope for the quarter one. By the end of the year, you will start seeing critical mass accumulating. India is probably a year older in terms of the existing IT infrastructure. As we go around talking to people in the enterprises, we see them heading towards a refresh in 2010. Also, consumers and small and medium businesses (SMB) continue to look for better technology. I will not be able to give you an exact number for growth, but worldwide the industry is expected to grow and there is no reason to believe that India will not play a significant role in that.
You seem to be quite bullish in your projections. In comparison, MAIT has predicted 7% growth for this quarter.
There are enough reasons to believe that this might happen and if the mood of the market is right, we might achieve it. I feel that we are going to grow in the high teens in year 2010. Enterprises have been significant buyers for us around the world and particularly here. Today?s outlook will be very different from yesterday?s outlook. Today?s outlook for the enterprise is how we take advantage of mobile technology and the connectivity it provides and how to take advantage of video technology.
Is the deal with Nokia to create Meego crucial to the communications pillar?
We are bringing together Maemo from Nokia and Moblin from Intel built on the Linux platform. We have enjoyed some good success with the testing of Maemo with Moblin and the open source community has accepted it. One of the very interesting things about Moblin is that it?s the opposite of technology intimidation, it is simple plain, un-intimidating couple of buttons on the screen and the system adapts to your pace, usage model. Moblin powers the netbooks; and MeeGo will be powering smartphones. LG phone that was launched in Mobile World Congress last year, actually supported Moblin and it also got smartphone of the year award.
Will the next computing wars be fought on smartphones?
This business is going through an interesting evolution though for us it?s been just part of a multi-layered approach to how we participate in this market. Historically, majority of the technological innovations were built for high-end of the demographic market, but we are now trying to build technology at a lower cost and for the developing markets. Low-cost processor Atom that we introduced in 2008 has created a new class of devices. I foresee the migration of the PC computing experience to smarter handheld devices. We might think Blackberry as a smartphone today, but what comes to the market in the next three years is going to blow our mind. The present Blackberry will look like a basic phone in about 2-3 years time.
But voice part is still big in the Indian market?
For India, the next wave of consumption of technology is how services are delivered to people. We are already taking voice to masses. Next issue is how to take data to 500 million people That?s what we should be worried about. If we can take the value of internet and connectivity and the value of low cost devices, it would be necessary in micro banking or any service to the consumer like education and this could influence the people in remote villages. They will have a huge impact and the timing for India is very critical, Timing is very critical in 2010, as you know (there is delay in auctions), BSNL is out getting rural WiMAX deployed, and that?s the kind of footprint gives you the opportunity to deliver this technology.
You continue to be bullish on WiMAX, despite the delays?
I think we are very optimistic and that?s the only way to answer it fundamentally because we believe that the technology around quality gives us the opportunity for us to work efficiently. It?s a huge opportunity for us to take broadband wireless to the masses and if India deploys the way that we anticipate, then we will become the single largest country using WiMAX. It allows us to drive the direction of that technology in the long term and that is something India has never done before. We think of adopting technologies, but here we have an opportunity to be the leader of the world using this technology. We understand the real issue that exists in the process of getting spectrum allocated; one of the things that might be interesting in consideration is to de-couple 3G and broadband wireless. There are a lot more people in the government and in industry who are able to understand the criticality of this.
By when do you expect WiMAX to become a viable revenue stream?
I think the timeframe for us to get to that critical mass where we can impact the life of nearly 500 million Indians is three to five years. Obviously, they will not log into internet one fine morning but what I mean is say you are a farmer from a local village and you don?t have any internet access but there is a local community service centre through which you are getting information about your crop price, about the health of your kid, we need to touch your life. We do not have any estimate as to how many people?s lives we will be touching. In 1999 when we hit our million cellphone subscribers, if somebody had said in 2009 we will have over half a billion in ten years, it would have sounded ridiculous. So I think it is about reaching the critical mass and offering the users a meaningful experience.
One of the critical things to address for India is mass consumption. We find that reliable 24/7 power availability is going to take another 10 years. But before that we have to work to come out with an integrated battery in a Net top like platform and it will should also be cost effective (since Net top batteries are not governed by international regulations because of which the cost shoots up) as well as environment friendly.