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Ketan R Sampat |
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Sales chief Amar Babu calls it "one of our best years in India".
Which reflects the market of 2004-05: PC and server growth, and a mobility jump.
With nine-tenths of the pie in its kitty for those areas, the market's fortunes
are Intel's.
With around 90% share of system shipments, Intel's revenue growth was helped
by better high-end chip sales for both servers and PCs. And the mobility and
wireless boom: the Centrino wireless platform helped ensure that revenues from
the mobility arena grew 150%. OEM vendors HCL, Zenith and Wipro launched their
own laptops. In January 2005, Intel upgraded its Centrino mobile platform with
Sonoma.
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The June 2004 launch of Grantsdale nudged up desktop revenues a bit, powering
high-end EPCs. Over the year Intel brought in 64-bit extensions (EM64T) across
all desktop and server CPUs.
The server story was about the high end, with Xeon and Itanium multi-CPU
systems getting a boost. New SAP projects in manufacturing-a traditionally
weak area for Intel-helped in a revenue share gain in servers from around 50%
to over 53%.
Other product areas included motherboards, which nearly doubled in revenues,
and the Dialogic voice cards, which powered Airtel ringtones, the new KBC show,
and various call centers.
Intel's big market development was 'Parivartan', a program to boost
desirability for PCs among SEC-B/C consumers through events and vernacular
media. Parivartan won a global Intel award. The 2005 plan: an SMB thrust.
Intel India president Ketan Sampat says two key programs for future growth
were around PC financing, and a broadband and data services push. Intel
"worked with the eco system"-signing agreements with SIDBI to bring
financing for IT to SMEs, and driving PC-broadband or CDMA wireless bundles
along with BSNL, Reliance and others. Intel also brought its global PC program
for financing and training for government employees and teachers.
Its education program continued, and Intel Capital invested $10 mn in NIIT,
aimed at pushing up computer-aided in schools.
At Intel's development center, a new microprocessor test lab, circuits
research lab and systems technology lab were the highlights. It's been a strong
year for Intel India, as it moves ahead to evaluate a chip test facility in
India in 2005-06.