New Delhi: As per report, an official said that as many as 44 IT hardware manufacturers, including global PC makers have registered for manufacturing laptops, tablets and personal computers in India.
The official did not name any company and said that the success that has been achieved with mobile phone manufacturing under the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme is expected to be repeated with IT hardware production.
“Leading laptop companies have registered for PLI and some of them are ready to start manufacturing in India any time. Global server companies have said that they want to make India an export hub for servers,” the official said.
The last date for manufacturing IT hardware under Rs 17,000-crore PLI scheme is August 30, as fixed by the government.
According to Counterpoint Research, Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple and Acer were the top five companies in the personal computer segment in the June 2023 quarter.
The total laptop and PC market size in India is almost USD 8 billion annually, said Tarun Pathak, Research Director of Counterpoint Research, out of which almost 65 percent of the units are imported.
The government has also announced a plan to allow import of laptop, tablets and personal computers with valid license in restricted category from November 1.
“The pull to manufacture IT hardware, especially laptops and tablets, in India, started during PLI 1.0, and it bloomed further with PLI 2.0. We expect local production of IT hardware devices in India will meet 60-65 percent of domestic demand in the next 2-3 years,” Optiemus Electronics (OEL) Managing Director A Gururaj said.
Lava International co-founder, Chairman and Managing Director Hari Om Rai supports the government’s move to restrict imports via valid permit.
“It will add 10 billion dollars to laptop manufacturing, billions of dollars of components and millions of jobs. It is also a very big milestone in building the much-needed scale of the supply chain of electronics in India,” Rai added.
He said the government has ensured that there is no disruption in the supply chain so that the companies will have no issues with the “ease of doing business” and the consumers will continue to get the products at the same price.
Deki Electronics MD and CII National Committee for Electronics Chairman Vinod Sharma said the government under IT hardware PLI has provided incentives for the use of locally manufactured components, which will boost the domestic components ecosystem.
“A non-tariff measure in the form of a licence to check imports will boost local production. Imported IT hardware can also be spyware or malware. We have had similar cases in the past. The government is absolutely right in imposing restrictions to make sure that devices are procured from trusted and safe sources,” Sharma said.
