— Photo: G. R. N. Somashekar

ACCENT ON DOMESTIC MARKET: Kiran Karnik (left), President, Nasscom, Paul Nielsen (centre), Director, SEI, and F. C. Kohli, Vice-Chairman, TCS, at the Quality Summit 2006 in Bangalore on Wednesday.

BANGALORE: The Union Ministry of IT and Communications has set up a working group to suggest ways for boosting sale of more personal computers in the domestic market, according to Kiran Karnik, President, National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).

At present, domestic sales of personal computers were just four to five million pieces annually, while 220 million PCs were being sold worldwide. The growth, which was at three times the growth of GDP, was satisfactory, but "we want to grow faster,'' he said while addressing at the `Nasscom Quality Summit-2006: Setting benchmarks in global outsourcing' being held here.

"The PC market should ideally grow the way telecom is growing. Five million new subscribers every month is fantastic growth. We should also ensure that PC sales grow from the present level of five lakh a month to three to five million a month. This will be a challenge,'' he said. Nasscom was helping the Government to ensure growth in PC and Internet penetration in the XI Plan, starting next year. Mr. Karnik said the IT industry body was promoting the concept of a bundled package, which offered hardware, software, maintenance and connectivity. Those who wanted to buy a PC could be provided this package against payment through equated monthly instalments (EMIs). This would help increase PC penetration in the country, he said.

F. C. Kohli, Vice Chairman, Tata Consultancy Services, in his address, lamented the poor PC penetration and slow growth of the domestic market. "Just two per cent of the world market for a country positioning itself as the global IT major is disappointing. At present, the software industry is worth $30 billion comprising $25 billion in exports and just $5 billion of domestic sales. Out of this, half is imported. This should change,'' said Mr. Kohli, who is also the Chairman of the working group set up by the Union Government and Nasscom to develop software in more Indian languages.

The Nasscom-McKinsey report projected India's software market to grow to $60 billion by 2010, of which the size of the domestic market would be a mere $10 billion. This should rise to about $40 billion, he observed. To broaden the domestic market, he said software in all the 22 Indian languages should be developed.

At present, software was available only in five languages — Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi. Seven more languages would be added this year and all the 22 languages would be covered in two years, he said.

Mr Kohli said "We want to build a strong hardware industry to increase IT penetration in the country''.

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