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Acer plans to double capacity at plant in India

Acer Inc (宏電) plans to double capacity at its personal-computer assembly facility in India as it expects sales in the country to expand 25 percent annually on purchases by state-owned companies.

Acer, which competes with local units of Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Computer Corp and other manufacturers for a share of the South Asian country's 1.8-million personal-computer market, plans to double capacity to 7,000 units a month early next year at its plant in Pondicherry in south India.

"Government-owned banks, oil refiners and other agencies have started taking decisions on" information-technology spending, said S. Rajendran, general manager at Acer India Pvt, in an interview. "Also, with our recent entry into the home and small office segment, we should see a 25 percent sales growth year on year."

India's state-owned banks and insurance companies are spending on hardware and software to automate their branches across the country to compete against private and overseas banks and insurance companies.

State Bank of India, the country's largest commercial lender, which has more than a fifth of all bank deposits in the nation of more than 1 billion people, is spending as much as 5 billion rupees (US$103 million) to connect about 9,000 of its branches, as part of plans to double business in three years.

India's computer sales fell 11 percent to 1.67 million units in the year to March 31, 2002, as businesses spent less on information technology in a slowing economy, according to the Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology, an industry group. They are expected to rise 12 percent to 1.88 million units in the current year as a recovery sets in.

With sales of just 35,000 units last year, Acer India has introduced a desktop personal computer for homes and small businesses to expand its market, Rajendran said.

As much as 60 percent of the computers sold in India are unbranded and made by local assemblers at about a third of the price of overseas brands such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM, which account for 27 percent, according to Acer. The rest come from local computer companies such as HCL Infosystems Ltd and Zenith Computer Ltd.
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