Jio Platforms, the digital arm of India’s Conglomerate Reliance Industries, has launched a virtual desktop service for set-top box users. This means that Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance, India’s wealthiest man, is hoping to turn millions of televisions into PCs in the world’s most populous country.
Called JIOPC, the service offers a cloud-based PC experience through Jio’s set-top boxes. This will be bundled free of charge with Telco’s home broadband service or can be purchased individually for £5,499 ($64). Users currently available via WaitList on a free trial can access the virtual desktop of their TV by connecting to their keyboard and mouse after receiving their invitation and setting up their account.
Currently, the service has some limitations, such as not including support for external peripherals such as cameras and printers. Similarly, it supports pre-installed open source LibreOffice. To use the Microsoft Office app, users must access it through an available browser.
That said, Ambani’s move with Jiopc looks promising, at least on paper.
CounterPoint research director Tarun Pathak told TechCrunch that Jiopc is a very effective way for Mumbai-based companies to increase their user base, already having over 488 million users.
About 70% of Indian households have televisions, but only 15% own PCs per Pathak. But Jio’s platform can fill up your hands with marketing and explanations. “We need to convince people that we can use our PCs on our TVs using set-top boxes,” he said.
India’s active pay TV set-top box user base stands at nearly 57 million per government data. However, the traditional at-home (DTH) television market is shrinking as more consumers move towards internet-based services. As of March, the active DTH subscriber base had declined 8% year-on-year, data shows.
Prabhu Ram, vice president of CyberMedia Research (CMR) Industrial Research Group (IRG), told JIOPC that Jio can be mounted on new set-top box users in rural and low-income segments with invasion shortages.
“Although its potential range is broad, its success depends, in particular, on addressing connectivity gaps and digital literacy — and on its ability to serve underserved communities beyond early adopters,” he noted.
In the first quarter, the entire Indian PC market experienced more than 8% year-on-year growth in shipments, reaching 3.3 million units, marking the seventh consecutive growth quarter per IDC. However, domestic PC penetration remains relatively low, with limited disposable income primarily and lag behind major markets including the US and China due to the widespread use of smartphones as major computing devices.
Pathak said that Jio will need partnerships between multiple app developers and productivity solution providers to reach potential PC buyers using JIOPC, ensuring that they have enough productivity apps to make the service valuable to consumers.
Companies, including Microsoft and many other cloud providers, have been offering virtual desktop services targeting corporate customers for a while. However, Jio’s move represents the first serious consumer-oriented movement, Ram said.
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