Industry executives say that while the government has been successful in restricting Chinese players Huawei and ZTE from participating in India’s 5G rollout after adoption of the “trusted sources” approach, replicating the same for IT hardware won’t be feasible. That’s because unlike telecom equipment, laptops/tablets are consumer devices.
More importantly, more than 80% of the market is controlled by non-Chinese firms belonging to the US, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, which are already trusted trade partners of India, said industry executives. Lenovo is the only Chinese firm.
Under India’s new rules for security of mobile networks, telcos are mandated to buy network equipment only from entities labelled by the National Cyber Security Coordinator as a ‘trusted source’ and product designated as a ‘trusted’ one.
“We have been hearing that the government wants trusted hardware systems and the move to restrict imports is due to national security. But we don’t understand the trigger for the move as our systems are already secured and we also follow the BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) regime,” said an executive with one of US’s leading hardware manufacturers.
Another executive with a different US company said while the government is likely to be using this to push back on Chinese supplies, the affected companies and countries are not from China. To be sure, most of these companies have their manufacturing plants in China.
ET had earlier reported that the licensing requirement against import of IT hardware was to guard against in-built security loopholes that might potentially endanger sensitive personal and enterprise data.
CHINA RELIANCE
According to an industry analyst, who asked not to be named, even if the number of hardware devices were restricted over time, the dependency during that period will continue to be in China.
“A vast majority of the imports of laptops are from China since the country is the major hub for assembling and manufacturing laptops and tablets for nearly all global brands which sell in India,” said the analyst. Further, such a ban on laptops alone will seem partial, since several other finished products which are far more strategically placed, are imported from China.
