Panasonic eyes Rs. 650 crore from IT business in FY13

Panasonic, which caters to mostly SMEs and large enterprises for its IT products, on Wednesday also launched 'ToughPad' and Windows 8-powered rugged ultrabook, targetted at government, utilities and manufacturing sectors in the country.

"Panasonic's system sales division has been growing at 40 percent and we are looking at closing the year (with revenue) at Rs. 650 crore. Globally, our Toughbook makes a strong contribution to revenues and we expect it will be a similar case in India too," Panasonic India MD System Sales Division Toru Hasegawa told reporters here.

The 10.1-inch 3G Android tablet PC, ToughPad, is designed to cater to the needs of healthcare, pharmaceutical and construction companies as well as the defence sector with its ruggedness and security features. It is priced at Rs. 75,000 onwards.

The Ultrabook, with its flip over design, can be used as a notebook and a tablet PC. It is priced Rs. 1.3 lakh onwards.

The company already has another business rugged laptop SX2 in the Indian market priced at Rs. 1.25 lakh and will soon launch another semi rugged laptop (convertible to tablet PC).

"The IT products revenue from India is one percent of the global IT products. We are confident of tripling this by 2015," Panasonic Cotp Director IT Products Business Unit Hide Harada said.

A rugged computer is a device specifically designed to reliably operate in harsh usage environments and conditions like strong vibrations, extreme temperatures and wet or dusty conditions.

Typical end-user environments for rugged laptops, tablet PCs and PDAs are field sales, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, transportation/distribution and the military.