Asia Tech Wire (Oct 21) -- The Indian government plans to restrict imports of laptops, tablet computers and personal computers from January next year in a bid to push companies including Apple to increase their share of local manufacturing in India.

Last year, the Indian government had launched a similar restriction program. But due to industry opposition and U.S. lobbying pressure, the plan was eventually withdrawn.

Presently, two-thirds of India's market demand is met through imports, and the size of India's IT hardware market is about $20 billion, but local production is only $5 billion.