Dell eyes top position in tablet market

With incremental growth in tablet market seeing several vendors gunning for top position Dell too charts new strategy centering Venue tablets. It has launched four Dell Venue tablets, including Venue 7 and Venue 8 with Android OS for consumers, and Venue 8 Pro and Venue 11 Pro with Windows 8.1 for business users.

Offering a both Android and Windows platform it intends to tap two essential market in India. Its goal is to emerge among the top three tablet players in the country within a year. Speaking to The DQ Week, P. Krishnakumar, Executive Director & General Manager, Consumer & Small Business, Dell India, said, "In the tablet space, there is a shift happening from entry-level, low-end tablets to high-end ones with better hardware and swift service support. This is where Dell will have an edge over the competition". The Venue tablets are now being sold in 15 cities across India and comes with a damage protection service. This service gives it an edge over other tablets as Dell promises to replace the tablet if it incurs any difficulty in functioning.

With cloud becoming an integral part of BYOD platform the tablet comes with pre-loaded pocket cloud apps. Krishnakumar saw the enterprise segment as a big opportunity. He said enterprises are increasingly adopting BYOD and looking at devices with built-in security and services. According to him, Windows-based tablets will gain significant traction in enterprises, and BFSI, pharma and retail will take the lead. He said that the Venue Pro series with Windows 8.1 could offer an end-to-end solution for these customers.

Dell initially plans to sell the new products through Dell exclusive and Croma stores in the top eight cities. "We will expand the focus to the top 50 cities in the next two months, and will include multi-brand stores and commercial partners catering to enterprises," informed Krishnakumar. "The Venue Pro series will be available through retail and commercial channels. We already have 160 exclusive stores in 70 cities which we will expand to 200 stores by March 2014."