“Despite the highs and lows, we consistently lead the market”

Having launched two new products - the Treo 600 smartphone and the Tungsten T5 in India in order to cash on the Indian appetite for hi-end handhelds, PalmOne is finding competitors like HP and Research In Motion (RIM) snapping at its heels and eating into its turf. Undeterred by this develop-ment, Daren Ng, Regional Director, Palm-One Asia Pacific wireless business unit remains confident that the company would maintain its consistent position as the numero uno handheld player. He shared his views on the company’s strategy to maintain its lead with Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News.

How has your foray into the Indian market been so far?

Firstly, we are happy about PalmOne’s performance in India. The company is in a com-manding position with 70 percent share this Q1 in the handheld space, according to Gartner. Our strategy is to meet the demands of the local tech savvy community.

India and South Asia will continue to be our area of focus. We are not using Indian as a dumping ground, but as a high growth market to launch new models. We are actively pursuing the enterprise seg-ment for our handhelds. We have already bagged sales force automation orders from a ma-jor FMCG player and a pharma-ceutical company in the cou-ntry. Other sectors like insura-nce are under evaluation.

PalmOne is also focused on building partnerships with application developers and SIs for mobility software solutions. In the enterprise segment, TVS Electronics is one of the largest providers of Palm OS solutions. We have in place a partner pro-gram called Plugged In, which is a forum for developers to sh-are views and information. We have also invested into a dedi-cated hotline for customers.

Are you also pursuing the retail route?

Retail is an important part of our strategy. We are evalua-ting key retailers in three major cities—Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. We have already spoken to companies like Creative Infotech and Ample Communications in Bangalore. The interest is certainly there. However, the enterprise seg-ment would be top priority.

Would PalmOne be shifting to operating systems like Windows and Linux?

As of now, PalmOne has no such plans. We are happy with the Palm OS. However, one can never say never. But right now, the response to Palm OS is very encouraging.

According to a Gartner report, PalmOne’s worldwide market share in the last quarter fell by 13 percent and rivals like HP and RIM are closely gaining more ground. Does PalmOne have any specific plans to tackle this?

Market share fluctuates from quarter to quarter. However, the fact remains that we continue to lead in innovation and move the goal post by introducing new products. Despite the highs and lows, we consistently lead the market.

There’s a positive way of looking at our growth. Com-pared to a Goliath like HP, which is the provider of compu-ter hardware and peripherals and is also into handhelds, PalmOne is dedicated and focused only on
handhelds.
And we continue to domi-nate the market despite the presence of large companies.

In terms of strategy, it is always about making sure our funda-mentals are good and make products that are acceptable to the local market.

There was a report that PlamOne is moving out of China and two distributors have pulled out of the PalmOne business. Can you elaborate?

No, There is no way we are backing out of China. We have an office there. We had to make some difficult choices and we have appointed a new distributor Worldlink. Our market share in China is around five percent, since the local manufacturers are strong.