Sun Micro sees robust India revenue on tech spends

By Sumeet Chatterjee

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Sun Microsystems Inc (JAVA.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) hopes to maintain the pace of doubling India revenue every three years, as technology spending by telecoms and financial services firms remain resilient, its India unit head said on Thursday.

The Santa Clara, California-based maker of computer servers, software and data storage devices has 1,400 staff in India, its fastest growing market globally.

"The growth of our customers is humungous," Bhaskar Pramanik, president of Sun Microsystems India, a fully owned subsidiary that was set up in 1998, told Reuters in an interview.

"As a market, it's something which will continue to grow in leaps and bounds. We haven't as yet seen the tip of the iceberg."

Pramanik declined to disclose details of India revenue or profits, citing company policy, but said the revenue had been doubling every three years.

"My belief is that we can continue to have that kind of growth even with the much larger base numbers which we have today," he said. "It's a huge market. There are lots of opportunities, the growth rates are just going to accelerate."

In its fiscal second quarter ended December 30, Sun had got 17 percent of its $3.62 billion global revenue from Asia-Pacific, which includes Japan, Korea, greater China, India, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Sun, which competes with IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Dell (DELL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), ranked No.1 in unit shipments in Unix server market in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan in the first three quarters of 2007, according to research firm IDC.