Wipro - one of the leading IT companies in India with their own PC manufacturing/assembling factories will stop manufacturing PCs, reports #-Link-Snipped-#. Wipro is likely to shut down their factories in Uttarakhand and Puducherry and the move is likely to affect about a 1000 employees. The factory is at a standstill for the past few days and no new units are being assembled. The announcement comes right after HCL Infosystems announced that they'll exit the PC assembling business. It's no surprise that PC makers aren't interested in the business anymore because of declining sales of personal computers.


Wipro's PC assembling business offered a range of hardware solutions including desktop PCs, portable laptops and servers. It's being reported that the business has seen declining profitability in the last few months. According to an official statement from Wipro; the company is evaluating the changing market scenario and customer demands. Decision to scale down the hardware business will follow.

The hardware business has helped Wipro stay competitive in bidding for large technology services projects. Having own manufacturing business allowed Wipro save about 10% of the costs but the recent fluctuations in dollar-rupee relationship no longer offers that benefit.

It's no wonder that the post-PC era has arrived with most of the end-user computing happening on laptops and tablets. Most of the home users anyway used their personal computers for watching videos, listening to music and playing games - something that the tablets and mobiles can offer more effectively than desktops or laptops.

What do you think about Wipro and HCL quitting hardware business? Is services overtaking manufacturing? Or should Wipro consider venturing into tablets and mobile manufacturing business? Will it give Wipro a competitive advantage?