‘Mobile manufacturing units need of the hour’

Free Software Movement of India has demanded that the Central and State governments bring in policy changes on Information Technology to give fillip to hardware manufacturing, setting up of data centres and software design centres. This, it said, is possible by establishing Information Technology Investment Regions (ITIR).

“The governments need to wake up to the reality of version 2.0 in the IT sector. Leading countries are moving away from version 1.0 - outsourcing of IT enabled services - and are creating new business models centred on automation of IT. The US recently came out with ‘reshoring initiative’, a job resource programme aimed at employing highly skilled software professionals from that country. India also needs to wake up and evolve its own business model to tap into the huge market in mobile manufacturing and website hosting,” Kiranchandra.Y, general secretary, Free Software Movement of India, said here on Friday. He was speaking on the sidelines of a student convention hosted by Swecha, Guntur.

Mr. Kiranchandra quoted data from the mobile telephony market to augment his demand. “The annual market for mobile telephones in the country is about Rs. 16,000 crore, yet India is yet to have its own mobile manufacturing unit. The mobile handsets designed in China, South Korea and Finland are simply being relabelled and sold in the country,” he said.

If India is able to set up mobile manufacturing units, which can design software and hardware, the country can make a giant leap in its IT earnings, besides boosting the employment prospects of local graduates, Mr. Kiranchandra said.

Similarly, the country is forced to buy proprietary software to host websites, which have their servers and data centres in the US and other countries.

“We have about one crore websites, and even going by the conservative estimate of each website costing Rs. 10,000, we have a market of Rs. 10,000 crore, which is being captured by other countries,” he said.

Free Software Movement of India, which is an extension of Swecha, an organisation that introduced free Telugu software. Into the decennial year, the Free Software Movement is drawing strength from a community of IT professionals opposed to proprietary software.