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seems that all is not going well with Cisco's strategy to tap the
Indian market with its enterprise tablet. The company had launched
Cius Android tablet targeting the enterprise segment in India in
September last year but it seems that the product has failed to
create buzz in the market.
talking to The DQWeek, a few of Cisco's collaboration
partners pointed out that the acceptability of Cius is certainly
missing at the customers' end. They feel that Cius is heavily priced
and India being a price sensitive market, it won't convert into
actual sales. In fact, some of the partners are still evaluating the
product and they will start dealing with it only in the first quarter
of FY13.
Kumar, MD, Proactive Data Systems and a collaboration partner of
said, “Cisco Cius is definitely a state-of-the-art product
with high-end video features. However, it is pretty heavy as far as
price is concerned. It is about $700 a product and I am not totally
sure if a customer in India is willing to pay that much of money for
the features that it carries. It is definitely over-engineered for
the Indian market at least. Till date, I have just sold 15-20 units.
We are not seeing bulk movement of sales. Apparently, a few of our
customers were talking about it till sometime back, but as of now,
they have stopped even doing so.”
now, Cius is at a pilot stage wherein Cisco is handing out 10-15
units to its customers for them to see how it works in their
environment. Cisco's collaboration partners are taking Cius to market
by either seeding or pushing it with other collaborative devices. The
reason being that they have not seen major or rather any demand from
the customers yet. For them, it is more like pushing it and asking
the customers to try the product.
accepting the allegation, Minhaj Zia, national sales manager, unified
communications, Cisco India and Saarc, said, “The uptake of Cius is
certainly slow. It has not picked up strongly because it requires a
certain set of infrastructure at the back-end for the customers to be
able to fully utilize it. We have a large base of IP telephony
customers who might be using the older version of this product. Now
that we have created the right infrastructure, customers will have to
upgrade to the latest version to utilize it and once the upgradation
is done, then only it becomes an attractive proposition for them. It
will take at least 8-10 months for our old customers to migrate to
the newer versions. However, the feedback coming from those pilots is
very encouraging.”
also goes ahead in alleging that though there is excitement within
Cisco globally, it is certainly missing in Cisco India. Cius does not
fit the Indian market so well yet. “I have not seen a pull in the
enterprise segment as well. We have sold to companies like Adobe who
have already adopted it in other countries like the US. Additionally,
Cisco is not at all aggressive in selling this product. They are
still trying to sell it by bundling it as a part of a solution set,”
pointed out Kumar.
further, SR Nautiyal of Spark Technologies, another Delhi based
partner of Cisco, said, “The product definitely has good prospects.
But as of now, it seems that Cisco is not aggressively promoting Cius
in the Indian market. However, it will certainly manage to make this
product available at the much wider scale in the market.”
The DQWeek for this feedback, Zia asserted, “We will
definitely take this feedback in our stride and will strive to create
more awareness about Cius amongst our tier-2 and 3 partners. Right
now, we a
seeding this product
for the customers to see the value in Cius. We will certainly
come up with aggressive campaigns to drive this product in the
market.”
the company has been able to sell below 500 units in India till date,
its expectations are to sell at least 5,000 units in the first year.
It also expects that the real conversion of sales will start picking
up in the AMJ quarter this year. And going forward, Cisco expects to
sell 10,000 to 20,000 units on a y-o-y basis.
just want to reiterate the fact to my tier-2 and 3 partners that Cius
brings a new opportunity for them while bringing in video device for
each and every employee of an organization. The partners can go and
explore the SMB and commercial customers. With this product, they can
tap the opportunities lying in those cities,” concluded Zia.