Reliance Jio opens its cloud PC subscription to all of India

Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Mukesh Ambani’s conglomerate, opened its JioPC cloud computing service to any internet user in India on Wednesday. The service had launched in July 2025 for Jio’s own broadband subscribers. It is now available as a stand-alone subscription to anyone with an internet connection, no matter which telecom or broadband provider they use.

JioPC streams a virtual PC from Jio’s cloud to a user’s existing computer, rather than running software on the device itself. Plans go up to eight virtual CPUs, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Jio says the setup can give computers as old as eight years access to the computing power needed for modern AI applications, without any hardware replacement. A two-month plan costs ₹1,000, about $11. A 12-month subscription runs ₹4,000, about $42, for 8GB of RAM and 500GB of storage, or ₹5,000, about $53, for the 16GB and 1TB tier.

The launch lands as India’s PC replacement cycles stretch longer. IDC estimated more than 65 million PCs were in use in the country in 2025, split roughly between 34 million consumer machines and 31 million commercial ones, with the installed base expected to approach 69 million by the end of 2026. Bharath Shenoy, a senior market analyst at IDC, told TechCrunch that consumers and small businesses now typically replace PCs every five to six years, up from four to five years in 2022, while enterprises have stretched their cycles to about four years from three.

A subscription instead of an upgrade

Prabhu Ram, vice president of the industry research group at CyberMedia Research, said Jio is broadening its value proposition by opening JioPC beyond its own subscriber base while challenging the standard hardware upgrade cycle. He does not expect the model to replace conventional PCs outright. Instead, he described it as a likely parallel, price-sensitive tier for households, students, and others for whom buying a new AI-capable PC was never a realistic option.

The pitch still faces resistance. Shenoy said Indian consumers have traditionally preferred owning their hardware over paying for computing as a service, meaning Jio will need to convince people that a recurring subscription is worth trading away some advantages of a conventional PC, including the ability to keep working without an internet connection. That trade-off could matter most in smaller cities and towns, where JioPC’s dependence on a stable connection means any disruption affects the user experience in a way it would not on a standalone machine. Refurbished PCs also compete at the low end, letting buyers own inexpensive hardware without staying tied to connectivity.

Jio has not disclosed much about the hardware behind the service, and the specifications it has released do not mention dedicated AI accelerator chips, a feature that defines the newest generation of on-device AI PCs. Ram said the real test is whether people start treating cloud computing as a daily utility rather than an occasional workaround, and whether they are willing to pay for computing power on an ongoing basis instead of buying new hardware outright.