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Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio is opening its cloud PC service to any internet user in India, positioning it as a way to turn aging computers into AI-ready machines without hardware upgrades. On Wednesday, Reliance Jio expanded JioPC, originally launched in July 2025, beyond its own broadband subscribers, making the service available as a stand-alone subscription to users with an internet connection, regardless of their telecom or broadband provider. The service streams a virtual PC from Jio’s cloud to an existing computer, with plans offering up to eight virtual CPUs, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Jio says the service can give even computers as old as eight years access to the computing power needed for modern AI applications, without users replacing their machines or installing new hardware. Plans start at ₹1,000 (about $11) for two months, while a 12-month subscription costs ₹4,000 (around $42) for 8GB of RAM and 500GB of storage, or ₹5,000 (about $53) for the 16GB and 1TB configuration. India had more than 65 million PCs in use in 2025, including about 34 million consumer and 31 million commercial machines, according to estimates from IDC, which expects the installed base to approach 69 million by the end of 2026. Ambani’s move comes amid widening replacement cycles. Consumers and small businesses in India typically replace their PCs every five to six years, compared with four to five years in 2022, IDC’s senior market analyst Bharath Shenoy told TechCrunch. Enterprises are stretching their machines for longer too, with replacement cycles reaching about four years, up from three previously. Jio is betting that cloud computing can stretch those lifecycles further. By shifting much of the processing and storage away from the device and into its data centers, India’s most valuable company can keep adding computing capacity without requiring users to replace the machines sitting on their desks. Prabhu Ram, vice president of the industry research group at the Gurugram-based market analyst firm CyberMedia Research, said JioPC could instead create a market where consumers pay for computing capability rather than repeatedly spending on hardware upgrades. “Jio is broadening its value proposition by opening JioPC to non-Jio users, while also challenging the traditional hardware upgrade cycle,” Ram told TechCrunch. However, he does not expect that model to replace conventional PCs. JioPC, he noted, could create a parallel, price-sensitive tier for households, students, and others “for whom buying a new AI-capable PC was never really on the table to begin with.” Indians have traditionally preferred owning their hardware over paying for PCs as a service, Shenoy said. Jio will have to convince consumers that a recurring subscription is worth giving up some of the advantages of a conventional PC, including the ability to keep working without the internet. That dependence could be particularly prominent in the smaller cities and towns where affordable computing has the most room to grow. JioPC requires a stable internet connection, and any disruption can affect the user experience, unlike a conventional computer. Additionally, there is competition at the low end from refurbished PCs, which Shenoy said allow consumers to own inexpensive hardware without remaining dependent on connectivity. Jio’s pitch of an “AI-ready” PC through JioPC also challenges the conventional idea of what an AI PC looks like. The company has not disclosed much about the underlying hardware powering the cloud service. However, the specifications it has provided do not mention dedicated AI accelerators for on-device generative AI workloads, which is a key feature of the new generation of AI PCs. Moreover, the real test for Jio, Ram said, is whether people come to see cloud computing as a “daily utility” rather than an “opportunistic workaround,” and are willing to pay for computing power instead of buying new hardware.
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