At a time when personal computer sales in the country have plateaued, Via Technologies, a Taiwanese company designing chipsets and central processing units, is promising to rewrite hardware pricing rules.

Via Technologies is selling its PCs for Rs 15,000, at least 40 per cent cheaper than locally assembled ones.

The Rs 15,000 price tag will get customers a 40GB hard disk, 128MB RAM, a CD-ROM and floppy disk drives, a soundcard with speakers and a 15-inch colour monitor.

The system is powered by a proprietary C-3 processor, which Via claims is 'adequate for most applications'.

The company claims its processor and motherboard cost Rs 3,000, against Rs 10,000 for an Intel P4 chipset and motherboard, in addition to a lower profit mark-up.

However, the fine print reveals that Via's C3 processor, at 800-1,000 megahertz, is slower than a standard Intel or AMD processor. Current processor speeds start at 1.6 giga hertz with top-end models going up 2.6 GHz.

Ravi Pradhan, country manager, Via Technologies, told Business Standard: "Our clock speeds are sufficient for running most computer applications, be it listening to music or watching movies, or for regular desktop applications. We are targeting sales of 50 million PCs in 10 years, out of a market size of 100 million PCs."

To put Pradhan's estimates in perspective, the current size of the Indian PC market is around 2 million and has been so over the past three years.

Via would not manufacture the PCs or even the central processing units itself, Pradhan said. The company planned to join hands with multinational and domestic original equipment manufacturers, who would manufacture the central processing units according to its specifications, while Via would restrict its activities to development and marketing, he added.