Panasonic eyes Rs 100 cr revenue from 'Toughbook' range

Japanese tech major Panasonic is betting big on segments like government and manufacturing to boost revenues from its rugged PC range Toughbook to Rs 100 crore by March 2018.
The company, which claims to have a 60 per cent share of the rugged PC market in India, said it expects a major chunk of the business to come from the government sector.
"We have seen a 30 per cent growth, which is faster than the 20 per cent growth seen in the market. We see strong demand in new areas like police, fire service, pharma, oil and gas," Panasonic Senior GM and National Business Head Gunjan Sachdev told reporters here.

Panasonic is poised to keep up the strong pace of growth it has been witnessing in the segment in the past few years and touch Rs 100 crore by March 2018, he added.
Sachdev said about 40 per cent of the revenues currently come from the government sector, while the remaining is from the private players.
This, he said, would be reversed in the next few years with the government accounting for a larger share given the strong demand being created under initiatives like Digital India.

Panasonic's competitors globally in the segment include Dell, HP and Getac, among others.
"In India, the rugged PC market is still small, about Rs 110 crore. This is expected to grow to Rs 165-170 crore in the next few years. We also expect to increase our share of the market from 60 to 65 per cent by then," Sachdev said.

Apart from India, Panasonic is also betting on markets like China to contribute to the growth of its Toughbook range.
The company's rugged PCs are manufactured at its facilities in Japan and Taiwan. It has no immediate plans of making the Toughbooks in India as of now.
Panasonic today launched a fully rugged, 2-in-1 laptop that detaches to become a 10.1-inch tablet, priced at about Rs 2.25 lakh. It features Intel Core processor, 8GB RAM and 128GB memory (upgradeable to 256GB or 512GB).