HP and Google Partner to Produce Chromebooks Made in India
HP has announced that it will partner with Google to manufacture its Chromebooks in India in line with the central government’s ‘Make in India’ vision. This joint venture will help promote digital education and provide affordable computing solutions to students who cannot afford expensive laptops, benefiting both schools and other educational institutions.
HP notes that these Chromebooks are manufactured near Chennai in Tamil Nadu at its Flex Facility. Production of these models will begin on October 2nd.
For those unfamiliar, Chromebooks run Google’s ChromeOS, which is a lightweight operating system designed for budget computers.
“HP is committed to promoting digital equality and we have been driving many initiatives to enable digital education across India. Manufacturing Chromebook laptops in India gives Indian students easy access to affordable computers,” said Vickram Bedi, Head of Personal Systems, HP India.
Bani Dhawan, Head of Education, South Asia, Google, said: “At Google, we have been working closely with the local education ecosystem and supporting them in their transition to digital learning experiences through our products and teacher programs. The local production of Chromebooks with HP is an important step in our efforts to continue supporting the digital transformation of education in India.” He also said that Google hopes this move will increase the reach of the technology in society so that more people can use it.
In other news, the Indian government imposed restrictions on laptop imports last month. According to the ban, the original deadline was November 1 this year, which would have been too early for OEMs to begin production on this scale. But the deadline has now been moved to an undisclosed date.
