"The Windows made a revolutionary change in the way PCs were looked at"

On

the changes in the PC

A fundamental change is in my opinion is the user-friendliness of the PC as a

product. There was a time when you used to have only the green screens and you

must know some kind of basic programming to even load DOS and start and boot the

system. And it wasn’t a user-friendly system. Windows made a revolutionary

change in the way PCs were looked at.

On the potential of the PC in India

There is no doubt that the country holds a very strong promise for the

future. The potential is very high. We are talking of a penetration of about two

PCs per thousand per year. It has an immediate potential of going to seven,

eight, ten and the PC becoming a very versatile product in terms of not only

computing but really communicating through e-mails, entertainment education and

a variety of things other than computing. I am sure the penetration level would

go up significantly.

On manufacturing in India

If manufacturing has to really take off, we have to create a completely

hassle-free environment and the manufacturing, as you know, has to be done for

the global markets and not necessarily for India. There’s really no reason

apart from the regulatory framework why manufacturing cannot be done in India on

a bigger scale.

On the future of the PC

I think the PC will not remain central. That’s my gut-feel. In certain

situations or for certain kinds of applications it would remain the ideal choice

as an input output device either for interacting with the back-end databases or

with the worldwide Web. However, in most other applications, PC is too unwieldy,

too big in size or too costly and you may not require using it.