"Hardware growth is essential for controlling software costs"–Manikandan

IT hardware industry will witness a steady growth year on year. Year 2004 is
expected to grow by 25 percent over 2003 and this is a good sign for the overall
IT industry, as I firmly believe that hardware growth is essential for
contro-lling software costs.

These sops offered by the government would definitely help increase the
overall gro-wth of the industry and PC penetration is sure to reach greater
heights in the coming months. We as vendors are quite upbeat about this move.

However, I feel that the gove-rnment should also be a bit clear towards the
duty-stru-cture regarding the compo-nent-level segment. There are some resellers
and assemblers who are not so clear about this segment and getting across the
right message would help a lot.

What can be done by the industry to accelerate the growth
of computerization in the domestic market?

The consumers should be well informed of technology developments, new
products, development trends etc. With the increase in consumer awareness, the
PCs can have expanded applications, which will result in newer market creation.
The advantages of inc-reased productivity, accuracy, reliability and convenience
resulting out of computeri-zation have to be well informed to various business
verticals.



Is it important for India to focus on computer hardware
manu-facturing to sustain its success in the software exports in the future?

The hardware manufactu-ring strength will certainly help in controlling
costs for software units. This in turn will make Indian software houses become
more competitive in the global arena. However, the other core competency for
software indus-try like quality manpower reso-urces, other government subsi-dies,
etc. are all made available. Hence, with a strong hardware presence, it will
further make Indian software houses more competitive.



What new products does LG plan to launch in the next 12
months?

LG will be launching a host of high-end CRT monitors and LCD monitors in 2004.
We plan to launch the newer models of CRT and LCD monitors in mid of Q1 of 2004.
The company also has plans to launch newer model PCs in Q1 of 2004.

LG is coming out with latest models, primarily because of the
positive market response the earlier models in the MY PC series have elicited.
The market segment which MY PC would be catering, would range from SOHO, home to
corporate to educational and government institutions. The price would be much
more affordable than the existing MNC PC brands.

What will be the growth pattern of technology in the
future? What role are technologies like Wi-Fi going to play in this regard?

Convergence is the key word today. There will be a whole lot of convergence
taking place between data and communi-cation. Internet ready termi-nals, tablet
monitors are but some of the emerging techno-logies in display. Wi-Fi would be
gaining ground this year, but I feel it would be restricted more to big
corporate, airports, hotels and so on. It will still take sometime for a country
like India to realize the full poten-tial of a technology like Wi-Fi.