By Dhaval Valia, 6 April 2009, 1300 hrs
In a bid to create a strong USP in the highly competitive mobile PC market, Samsung India has decided to offer pick-up warranty services.
“We have introduced a unique pick-up warranty service for our mobile PCs. This, we believe, will be a strong USP in India where consumer notebooks mostly come with carry-in warranties. We have rolled out the door-delivered pick-up service in eight cities and will gradually take it to other places,” said Ranjit Singh Yadav, Director, IT, Samsung India.
Samsung is also planning to beef up its retail presence for its mobile PCs. “We are setting up a network of exclusive micro-retailers across the top cities, as well as are relying on large-format retailers such as Croma. Also, we plan to sell our products through select and exclusive consumer durable outlets. We expect netbooks to record very strong growth this year, and emerge as a major category,” said Yadav.
Commenting on Samsung’s past failure in the PC market, Yadav said, “Earlier, our focus was only on high-end premium notebooks. Also, the notebook market then was much smaller than what it is right now. With emergence of a completely new category of mobile PCs called netbooks, which we believe are going to be a game changer. They have opened up the mobile PC market to new entrants.”
Yadav doesn’t forecast big numbers for Samsung notebooks in 2009. “Since it’s the first year for notebook PCs it’s a little difficult to estimate numbers. But we should be looking at a double digit market share by 2010. Our focus in the first year is to create awareness about our products, generate brand-pull, ensure product placement and set up the right channel for these new products,” he added. |