AMD and Intel slog it out in India

TWO SIMULTANEOUS LARGE SCALE ad campaigns are raging in the subcontinent, with Lenovo majoring on AMD microprocessors while HP is happy to run the Intel Inside anthem on its TV adverts.

Not that the campaign is restricted to TV. At Bangalore airport, the center of the so-called "Silicon Plateau", anyone who arrives is greeted with a huge poster highlighting AMD chips in Lenovo machines. The battle is on for the hearts and minds of the ever increasing middle class.

But while Lenovo and HP are going for it with the help of their chip suppliers, hammer and tongs, Michael Dell has lit out at the lack of support given to his firm in the subcontinent. The strange thing is that the channel in India is in a state of ferment similar to that in the UK in the early 1990s, and perhaps people noticed that happened. Michael Dell has complained at the tariffs his firm is having to endure in India.

He is calling for those tariffs to ease so that Dell can be given a fighting chance without having to relocate to a special economic zone (SEZ), sez he.

Some states in India have set up these SEZs with all sorts of economic advantages up for grabs, while other locations miss out because they haven't got the say so of other democratic states and governments in the country.

One experienced IT veteran in Bangalore commented today that Indian states have a balancing act between social democracy and enterprise to juggle in their plans. On the one hand, he said, it is quite right that people should be helped to realise their potential and also have the benefits of welfare and the rest.

But on the other hand, he said, in a country like China, free of democratic restraints, politboros can impose their diktats on infrastructure and just instruct enterprises to go for it, hammer and tongs (shorely sickle, Ed.)

Because of those different restraints, India is somewhat losing out to China in terms of inward investment. Which is interesting. Because a lot of the money sloshing round emanates from stable and well established Western democracies.