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has ambitions to reach the number two position in the
Indian PC market. S Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer, Acer India
said, “Our aim is to reach the number two in the PC market in about
four to five quarters time. We are already at number three and so we
are being realistic in our goals and the time required meeting them.”
Acer had set up its India operations in September 1999 with a
manufacturing base in Pondicherry and is one of the youngest MNCs and
also among the top ten consumer brands in the country. “While
globally we are at number two in the PC market standing, in a short
span of time, we have reached the number three spot in India,” said
Rajendran.
of the challenges to Acer attaining its number two goal, Rajendran
acknowledged, “The manufacturing requirement is large and often
there is a problem when it comes to fulfilling high demand.” One of
the important aspects of getting to its goal would be to have a
strong after sales network support set up. Acer has just that with a
network that extends across 450 towns in the country.
data from IDC highlighted Acer achieving number one status in the
desktops segment with 158,000 units in the JFM quarter of 2010 as
opposed to 153,500 units from HP. According to Rajendran, the
quarterly figures are a reflection of natural market forces. “We
saw a few aspects that led to sentiment inspired buying. One of this
was the arrival of Windows 7 as well as the newer processor
technology from Intel like the Core I series. One of the major
factors for us doing better than HP in this quarter was because of
our performance in the education segment of the desktop market.”
Acer is already present in one of two schools or one of three schools
in states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat,
Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and the North-East states. “Our
focus on schools and colleges is not slowing down and because of our
strong presence in the education segment we have been able to do well
in the desktops market. The education segment has been more insulated
against the recessionary effects as compared to other segments and
hence that has played out well for us,” said Rajendran. Institutes
like ICFAI, IITs as well as other engineering and management colleges
count among Acer's customers.
also gave further insight into the market trends. “In the consumer
retail segment, we have been strong in the BFSI and government
verticals. Some of the reasons for BFSI to invest in PCs were because
of branch expansion with many new branches as well as revamp of
existing infrastructure taking place. In the government space,
investment was driven by e-governance projects especially by state
governments.
instance
in Gujarat, various citizen touchpoints with the government
have been computerized.
45000 PCs have already been sold for these projects over the last
four to five quarters,” said Rajendran.
some of the company's strategies for the rest of the year,
Rajendran commented, “We will be looking to increase our focus on
the enterprise space and have already started reorganizing our
manpower from the top to the field level. We have around 83 Acer
Select partners for targeting the enterprise corporate customer and
plan to increase this to around 100 by March next year. In the second
half of the year, we will also up our focus on our server business
and increase our visibility there. We are also looking at other
product lines like TFTs and projectors. We are already number one in
the TFT segment as per JFM figures for this year. In projectors, we
are among the top five players with most of the buying coming from
the education, corporate and SMB sectors.”
Rajendran while not sharing much on his expectations from the AMJ
quarter spoke about one major trend to expect from the JAS quarter of
the year. “Traditionally, JFM and JAS are stronger quarters
compared to AMJ and OND and for JAS we are expecting a lot of
movement in the PC market being attributed to the back to school
trend which results in a lot of PC purchases in the home and in the
education sector. Allied to that, we will be having some promotions
in association with Intel and Microsoft for our products,” signed
off Rajendran.