Dell, which is a well known PC major, is hopeful that its India business would touch a billion dollars by next year.

Michael Dell, who is the Founder chairman and CEO of the company, was extremely excited about the growth in India, and had come to India for the launch of new ultra-portable business series laptops.

Wednesday saw Mr. Dell launching a new line of Latitude and Dell Precision laptops. These new laptops have some really exciting and out of the world features. A business laptop, which is 12.1 inch and 0.99-kgs promises a battery life up to 19 hours.

In the next five years, countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China will see a tremendous rise in the laptop users which can go up to a billion users, as said by Mr. Dell.

“Internet usage has grown 26 per cent in India over the last year. By 2012, India will have the largest WiMAX network in the world,” reported Mr Dell while addressing the opportunities in India. Dell experienced a volume growth of 99 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2008. The company besides manufacturing and selling hardware in India also has a service & support arm.

Dell A-PAC’s President Paul-Henri Ferrand, informed, “We have nearly tripled our business in India from $300 million three years ago to $800 million we expect to do this year. We will be a billion-dollar business next year.” Dell A-PAC is a strong player in the corporates segment.

Since the past three years, there had been an increase in the laptop users in India as compared to the users of PC. The growth started from 5% and today it has reached 29%.

The PC makers like Dell are hopeful that more users will switch to laptops and the ones who are suppose to buy for the first time would also go for laptops instead of PC. A research conducted by IDC concludes that by next year, laptops would globally replace desktops.

Mr. Dell commented on the economic slowdown, “In times of slowdown, people look for ways to become more productive. The PC volume growth has been healthy in the last quarter.”