DQW Poll : Quick Heal is the King of Channels

In the recently conducted DQW Poll over the best channel friendly company, Quick Heal seems to have the strongest claim as the "most channels friendly" company commanding an absolute majority at 54% outbidding foreign MNCs and other players by a gigantic margin.

HP secured itself at the second slot managing to bag only 13%, way too behind than Quick Heal while Intel and Samsung got a voting of 5% resulting in a tied second runner up.

The poll results clearly indicated the shift of the channel partners to favour Indian companies rather than their foreign counterparts as for the first time, an Indian based security software developer outpaced mammoth computer builders who invented corporate computing.

Voters favoured the channel hierarchy and the margins Quick Heal offers coupled with its geographic presence and popularity among the consumers who consider Quick Heal AV as "essential" while its closest competitors's products are viewed as "freebies and add-ons".

Channel partners across India has been equivocal in stating that Quick Heal not just offers the best margin, the company's products are designed in accordance to the latest technologies and "partners find it easier to bag a large deal with Quick Heal as the product".

HP, which has always featured as one of the key favourites of channels since inception was dragged down at 13%, namely on account of its recent losing market shares and several unattended service complaints from its channel partners. Service was the key issue primarily in the eastern and north-eastern markets while concern for a dwindling market share featured as the concern for northern and western partners. The company, however, when pitted against competition in core computing remained the champion. Even its solution wings scored higher than competition among the various channel partners in India.

Intel and Samsung were the joint winners for the channels bronze each getting 5% of favourable votes across India respectively. Intel recently announced its plans of quitting the semi-conductor business leaving the channels anticipating major changes by 2015 as a result of the move. Even then, with its near monopoly with processors and the recently introduced notebooks, Intel emerged as a favourable company for the channels.

Samsung scored the highest for its smartphone and monitor sales and its lead in the newly introduced Smart TV. Although some import issues with channels had tarnished its image in the west earlier in 2012, Samsung had coped with its channels image considerably.

The other competitors in the poll were Asus (3%), Lenovo (3%), Cisco (3%), LG (1%), Microsoft (2%), Digilink (1%), Seagate (1%) and Tally (5%).