New Delhi: The second generation of Intel’s Classmate laptop is still in the pilot stage but the company is forging alliances to capture a larger share of the huge student laptop market. It has teamed up with education software providers such as Educomp and Heymath.com in order to tap this segment of the market.
So, how big is the market for laptops for students? According to Ajit Singh, director, APAC ecosystem development group, Intel India, “There are a million schools in India, of which about 75,000 are private. Take out the top schools in tier-I cities, we are still talking about 4,000-5,000 schools that have significant potential to invest in these technologies. Think of a Classmate (laptop) in each of the students hands. That’s the size of the market we’re talking about.”
The Classmate laptop which is a mobile learning device was introduced in 2007 on a pilot basis with HCL. Its second generation pilot was introduced sometime back.
But Intel is not alone to tap into this potentially lucrative market. The XO laptop is powered by its rival, AMD’s chips, and is already in the market. In addition there are other low cost laptops also available. The government recently announced that it aims to provide laptops to students at $10 or roughly Rs400. But that does not worry Intel. They say that it’s an objective tough to achieve.
The Classmate laptop costs around Rs16,000. That’s cheap but still not within the budget of a majority of the school-going population. While low-cost laptops are gaining ground in India, some, such as Harsh Rajan, co-founder of HeyMath.com, feel the market will take time to expand. He says, ” Our experience shows that initial off takes or adapters of this technology, are few and small. It’ll take a couple of years for the initial seeding to happen and then the take off.”