Intel seeks growth in India through reference designs

Intel has designed a point-of-sale system for Indian retailers, part of a new strategy to create reference designs for products aimed at India's fast-growing IT market.

Reference designs provide a kind of blueprint that other manufacturers can use to build products, and Intel's goal is to offer designs that are based around its own chips.

The company's Indian division will also design products for medical systems and factory process control systems, and the designs may also be offered in other countries.

The design for the point-of-sale system has already been adopted by some Indian companies, Joe Jensen, general manager of Intel’s Embedded Markets Division, told reporters in Bangalore on Wednesday.

Intel has also set up a program to work with Indian design houses that do product development for multinational companies. The design houses have a lot of influence on system architectures and the hardware used, and are often involved in designing a ready-to-manufacture package for multinational companies, Jensen said.

“Our program will ensure that these design houses will be able to build products using Intel technology,” he said.

As well as independent design houses, Intel is aiming its program at design subsidiaries of multinational companies, and electronics manufacturing services companies with operations in India.