India a Key Market for Sales and R&D Says HP CEO

HP CEO Enrique Lores stated that the company is actively exploring opportunities to expand its presence in India. To achieve this, HP is pursuing a dual strategy: prioritizing local manufacturing and attracting top tech talent to play a key role in developing software features for HP products.

“India is the second country in the world where we have the most employees, and a large number of them are engineers working specifically in software development, which we will integrate into the rest of our portfolio,” he informed.

Lores mentioned that India is already a significant market for PC sales. In fact, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC), HP is the leading PC manufacturer in India by market share.

“Across different categories, we have some of the highest market shares globally. Moreover, in India we conduct a lot of internal development and research…something that we use in our products sold worldwide,” Lores told indianexpress.com on the sidelines of the Amplify conference held in Nashville, Tennessee.

Like other major tech companies, HP is optimistic about the opportunities the Asian market presents, including an untapped consumer base and access to top talent.

Additionally, concentrating on India allows the American computer manufacturer to diversify its supply chain. Late last year, HP placed an order with local contract manufacturer Dixon Technologies to produce laptops and desktops under the government’s performance-linked 'Make in India' initiative. Manufacturing in India enables HP to offer its products at more competitive price points, boosting its market competitiveness.

“In India regulations require products to be built locally. We adopted these regulations a few months ago, and the month of April will mark the first month in India in which the new factory begins producing notebooks,” he added.

HP, like other major tech companies, is intensifying its focus on India to reduce reliance on China. Recent geopolitical tensions, such as the escalating conflict between Washington and Beijing, have prompted many consumer companies particularly those that manufacture in China—to lessen their dependence on Chinese production. Furthermore, companies like HP are exposed to the impact of tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump on Chinese-made goods.

With the comparatively lower penetration of PCs in India than smartphones, it gives companies like HP room to further investigate that market and introduce next-generation personal computers with integrated artificial intelligence features. More and more, PC manufacturers are targeting commercial AI-powered PCs toward large corporations and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) where AI features have already gained some traction for adoption.

“In other countries we are working with local authorities to develop models that leverage the local culture. This is something we are not doing in India yet. For instance, we are doing that in Spain, where we are collaborating with local universities and the government to develop a Spanish-specific Large Language Model (LLM) that integrates all aspects of Spanish culture. We are also working on the same front in Saudi Arabia, developing a similar model in Arabic. We believe this will have a lot of potential in countries like India as well,” he said when asked about how HP is looking to deploy AI models developed locally into its products.