Ramdas S, CRN, December 22, 2011, 1045 hrs
Asus India has decided to enter branded desktops in the country, at a time when most branded desktop vendors are seeing their volumes and margins slipping. The Taiwanese manufacturer will make availability of their desktops in early February 2012.
The desktops will be distributed through the Open Platform Business Group which looks after the components business in the country. “Rashi Peripherals our existing sole distributor for India for component business will be in charge of distribution. Rashi has made huge investments into building the Asus brand and channels in the country, and have enabled over 15,000 partners for us over past decade or so. However for the desktop business, you would see a bigger participation from Asus India team in channel enablement, compared to the component business.” said Vinay Shetty, Country Head, Component Business, Asus Technology.
Shetty said that Asus has no plans to focus on entry level markets. “Based on third party market studies, we understand that 50 percent market share is entry level or sub $500, and this is a highly competitive market where Acer, Lenovo and Dell compete with system builders, and this has resulted in very low margins for everyone. We plan to focus on SKUs that would be priced above Rs 35,000 without a monitor,” added Shetty.
Ausus would focus only on the consumer market in the initial days. Shetty also pointed out that Asus is in no hurry to chase large numbers. “This is a five year project, and our plan is to capture just two to three percent of the Indian desktop market. But we will focus on becoming leaders in niche segments such as gaming PCs, hi-end multimedia, AIOs and workstations, where there are better margins for the channels.” |