If the disruption in telecom industry was not enough, Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio is now vying to target the existing Personal Computers (PCs) market in India. After its debut in 2016, Jio has come up with smartphones and 4G feature phones, much to the dislike of the current players in the market. If reports are to be believed, one can say that there’s a huge possibility of Jio entering the laptop market in India.
Imagine a laptop, embedded with a SIM card, a Jio 4G one, and you can Internet accessibility everywhere you go. In the latest development by the company, Reliance Jio is in talks with US-chip major Qualcomm to launch laptops running on Windows 10 OS that has a built-in hardware to accommodate cellular connections. Qualcomm is closely associated with Reliance Jio and Retail, for its business of 4G feature phone.
After debuting with smartphones and later launching 4G feature phones and MiFi dongles in India, Reliance Jio’s next bet is the prevalent laptop market in India. As per an Economics Times report, Senior Director – Product Management, Miguel Nunes commented, “We have talked with Jio. They take the device and bundle it with data and content.”
The US-chip major is already in talks with Indian-based Internet-of-Things (IoT) manufacturer, Smartron, about the same and integrating cellular connectivity with Snapdragon 835-powered laptops. Smartron founder and CEO, Mahesh Lingareddy, confirmed the news.
Only last year, Microsoft launched a few laptop systems with Asus and HP; with Snapdragon Qualcomm 835 chipset and Windows 10 OS. Some of the benefits of all-time PCs are as; instant boot-up, upgraded privacy settings and extended battery life.
How will Reliance Jio benefit from this deal, if-at-all it happens, is for time to tell. For now, the news of Reliance Jio vying to tap the laptop market in India is enough to send down shivers down the spine of competitors.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 12, 2018 05:27 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).