Kerala to manufacture laptops, Coconics announces three models

Kerala has become the first state to design and manufacture laptops in the country. Coconics, which is a public-private partnership (PPP) enterprise, has launched its first range of laptops aimed at government, enterprise and educational institutions. The announcement was made on the sidelines of the 2019 edition of Electronics Manufacturing Summit in New Delhi.

Coconics has launched three laptops models. The CC11B is a 2-in-1 notebook featuring a 11-inch FHD touchscreen display, Intel Celeron N3350 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC storage, USB Type-C connectivity and up to eight hours of battery backup. The laptop is aimed at frequent travellers.

Coconics is a joint venture of the state-run Keltron, US-based technology firm UST Global, KSIDC and Acceleron. It is pitched as a unique public-private laptop and server manufacturing company from Kerala. Meanwhile, Intel has been roped in to provide the guidance and technical assistance to manufacture laptops in India under the ‘Make in India’ initiative.

The laptops will be manufactured at the state-of-the-art plant in Monvilla, Thiruvananthapuram. Coconics has a capacity to produce 2,50,000 laptops annually. The manufacturing plant is ready and an official plant inauguration will happen this month. And that’s when the manufacturing of the laptops will also begin.

Coconics said it plans to distribute the new notebooks by the second-quarter of 2019. The prices of laptops will depend on how big the order the company receive from the organisation/or educational institutions.

In a Facebook post last week, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan wrote: “We are going to leverage the advantage we have in human resources by pivoting to Hi-tech manufacturing…. The initiative will become an important step in the State’s foray into electronics sector.”

The CC11A is a slim and lightweight notebook aimed at educational institutions. The notebook comes with a 11-inch HD display, Intel Celeron N4000 processor, 2GB RAM and 64GB eMMC storage.

The C314A, a rugged notebook, is aimed at the enterprise market. It sports a 14-inch HD display and features an Intel i3 7100U processor coupled with 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD storage. All three notebooks run on Windows 10 operating system.