Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio is opening its cloud PC service to any web person in India, positioning it as a technique to flip getting old computer systems into AI-ready machines with out {hardware} upgrades.
On Wednesday, Reliance Jio expanded JioPC, originally launched in July 2025, past its personal broadband subscribers, making the service out there as a stand-alone subscription to customers with an web connection, no matter their telecom or broadband supplier. The service streams a digital PC from Jio’s cloud to an current pc, with plans providing as much as eight digital CPUs, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage.
Jio says the service may give even computer systems as outdated as eight years entry to the computing energy wanted for contemporary AI functions, with out customers changing their machines or putting in new {hardware}. Plans begin at ₹1,000 (about $11) for 2 months, whereas a 12-month subscription prices ₹4,000 (round $42) for 8GB of RAM and 500GB of storage, or ₹5,000 (about $53) for the 16GB and 1TB configuration.
India had greater than 65 million PCs in use in 2025, together with about 34 million shopper and 31 million industrial machines, in response to estimates from IDC, which expects the put in base to strategy 69 million by the top of 2026.
Ambani’s transfer comes amid widening alternative cycles. Shoppers and small companies in India sometimes exchange their PCs each 5 to 6 years, in contrast with 4 to 5 years in 2022, IDC’s senior market analyst Bharath Shenoy instructed TechCrunch. Enterprises are stretching their machines for longer too, with alternative cycles reaching about 4 years, up from three beforehand.
Jio is betting that cloud computing can stretch these lifecycles additional. By shifting a lot of the processing and storage away from the gadget and into its knowledge facilities, India’s most respected firm can maintain including computing capability with out requiring customers to exchange the machines sitting on their desks.
Prabhu Ram, vice chairman of the trade analysis group on the Gurugram-based market analyst agency CyberMedia Analysis, stated JioPC might as an alternative create a market the place shoppers pay for computing functionality somewhat than repeatedly spending on {hardware} upgrades.
“Jio is broadening its worth proposition by opening JioPC to non-Jio customers, whereas additionally difficult the normal {hardware} improve cycle,” Ram instructed TechCrunch.
Nevertheless, he doesn’t count on that mannequin to exchange standard PCs. JioPC, he famous, might create a parallel, price-sensitive tier for households, college students, and others “for whom shopping for a brand new AI-capable PC was by no means actually on the desk to start with.”
Indians have historically most well-liked proudly owning their {hardware} over paying for PCs as a service, Shenoy stated. Jio should persuade shoppers {that a} recurring subscription is price giving up a number of the benefits of a traditional PC, together with the flexibility to maintain working with out the web.
That dependence could possibly be significantly distinguished within the smaller cities and cities the place inexpensive computing has probably the most room to develop. JioPC requires a steady web connection, and any disruption can have an effect on the person expertise, not like a traditional pc.
Moreover, there may be competitors on the low finish from refurbished PCs, which Shenoy stated enable shoppers to personal cheap {hardware} with out remaining depending on connectivity.
Jio’s pitch of an “AI-ready” PC by JioPC additionally challenges the standard concept of what an AI PC seems to be like. The corporate has not disclosed a lot in regards to the underlying {hardware} powering the cloud service. Nevertheless, the specs it has offered don’t point out devoted AI accelerators for on-device generative AI workloads, which is a key function of the brand new technology of AI PCs.
Furthermore, the actual take a look at for Jio, Ram stated, is whether or not folks come to see cloud computing as a “day by day utility” somewhat than an “opportunistic workaround,” and are keen to pay for computing energy as an alternative of shopping for new {hardware}.
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