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 S Rajendran, CMO, Acer India, says the global economic cycle will increasingly witness instability and partners must learn to adapt to changing dynamics
The IT industry over the next decade will be very different from what it has been over the past decade. New concepts and technologies are evolving that will transform the IT landscape.
While this transformation was on the cards, the slowdown has surely expedited it.
Coming to 2009, I believe that India has done appreciably well to manage the economic crisis. In fact, I would like to go a step further and state that technically there was no slowdown in the country. It was perhaps the fear of a slowdown that made all of us cautious, so the Indian slowdown was purely on sentiment.
After the worst-ever Q4 in 2008, the PC market did quite well, and by the year-end the numbers didn’t look as bad as expected earlier. One has to give the credit for this to consumer demand. While enterprise demand nose-dived, we saw some bright spots in the government sector and in industry verticals with a strong domestic focus.
Transition and trends
The biggest transition was the complete shift from CRT monitors toward TFT monitors during 2009.
Last year also saw the acceptance of small-form-factor desktops, a trend that’s likely to see more traction in the coming years. Netbooks became a product category of their own, and we feel that with the new Intel Atom platform, code-named Pinewood, which will offer better graphics performance, we will see the Netbook market grow considerably.
All-in-one PCs made a return last year, and partners can expect more models during the year. The notebook segment saw touch-screen notebooks which are targeted at specific customer bases as of today, but which are likely to gain better acceptance in the days to come.
Technologies to bet on
Acer is betting that backlit TFT monitors will completely replace the present TFT monitors. Backlits offer more accurate color rendering, and are more energy-efficient and environment-friendly. This will get some customers to upgrade their existing monitors.
Microsoft has finally got a winner in Windows 7, and the acceptance of the new operating system will drive more customers to buy new PCs.
Yet another disruptive technology we see is Intel’s new Core platform (i3, i5, i7), which, with its vast improvement in performance, will tempt users to upgrade PCs.
Lessons for channels
For channels there are important lessons to be learned from the slowdown of the past year and more. The global economic cycle will increasingly witness instability—with consistent spikes and troughs—hence partners must learn to adapt to changing business dynamics. Every year customers are going to get smarter—and the competition will get even more intense.
During 2010 we will evolve our multi-brand PC strategy which we launched in 2009. We are making a strong push in the enterprise segment, and will soon launch enterprise-class servers and storage products which should make our product portfolio more competitive and complete. |