Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries, has launched a digital desktop service for set-top field customers. Which means India’s richest man, Reliance’s chairman Mukesh Ambani, hopes to show hundreds of thousands of TVs on the earth’s most populous nation into PCs.

Known as JioPC, the service gives a cloud-based PC expertise via Jio’s set-top field, which comes bundled free of charge with the telco’s house broadband service or will be bought individually for ₹5,499 ($64). At the moment in free trial and obtainable by way of waitlist, customers can entry the digital desktop on their TV by plugging in a keyboard and mouse as soon as they obtain an invitation and arrange their account.

At current, the service has some limitations, together with no assist for exterior peripherals, resembling cameras and printers. Equally, it helps open supply LibreOffice, which is pre-installed. To make use of Microsoft Workplace apps, customers must entry them by way of the obtainable browser.

That mentioned, Ambani’s transfer with JioPC appears to be like promising — not less than on paper.

Tarun Pathak, a analysis director at Counterpoint, informed TechCrunch that JioPC is a really efficient approach for the Mumbai-headquartered firm to extend its person base, which already has over 488 million customers.

Round 70% of Indian households have a TV, however solely 15% of them personal a PC, per Pathak. However Jio Platforms may have its fingers full with advertising and marketing and explanations. “That you must persuade individuals which you could nonetheless use a PC in your TV utilizing the set-top field,” he acknowledged.

India’s energetic pay-TV set-top field person base stands at almost 57 million, per authorities knowledge. Nevertheless, the normal direct-to-home (DTH) TV market is shrinking as extra customers shift to internet-based providers. As of March, the energetic DTH subscriber base had declined by 8% year-over-year, the information reveals.

Prabhu Ram, vice chairman of the Business Analysis Group (IRG) at CyberMedia Analysis (CMR), mentioned with JioPC, Jio may onboard new set-top field customers from underpenetrated rural and low-income segments.

“Whereas its potential attain is broad, its success will rely on execution — particularly in addressing connectivity gaps and digital literacy — and on its means to scale past early adopters to successfully serve underserved communities,” he famous.

In Q1, India’s total PC market skilled over 8% year-over-year progress in shipments, reaching 3.3 million items — marking the seventh consecutive quarter of progress, per IDC. Nevertheless, PC penetration within the nation stays comparatively low, lagging behind key markets, together with the U.S. and China, primarily as a result of restricted disposable revenue and the widespread use of smartphones as major computing units.

Pathak acknowledged that for Jio to succeed in potential PC consumers with JioPC, it will require partnerships with a number of app builders and productiveness resolution suppliers and guarantee it has sufficient productiveness apps to make the service worthwhile for customers.

Corporations together with Microsoft and plenty of different cloud suppliers have supplied digital desktop providers focusing on enterprise prospects for a while. Nevertheless, Jio’s transfer represents the primary severe consumer-oriented transfer, Ram mentioned.