Notebooks taking up PC sales

India is a market that is unlike any
other market in the world. Here most of the purchase decisions,
including the ones for IT products, are mainly dictated by the
budget, disposable income, unique end user taste, family influence,
utilitarian value and least due to the nature of the work to be done
on it.

End users spend a lot of time talking
and inquiring about the specs and speed of the PC but they happen to
ignore the monitor which they look at throughout their computing
time. The awareness level towards the quality and specs of a monitor
take a backseat in this entire episode and the end-user ends up with
a powerful machine with a mediocre monitor and this is when he
realizes the value of the monitor.

We are hoping the market to be flat to
marginally increasing. A large chunk of PC sales is being taken up by
notebooks and even with the overall market growth; the PC portion is
largely stagnant. Five years back, there was a concept of family PC
in India wherein the house had just one PC which was shared by
everyone for education, entertainment, running office applications,
browsing Internet etc. However, in recent times, due to technology
miniaturization and increase in disposable income of the households,
notebook has become a personalized device akin to mobile phones and
the advent of netbook has further boosted this concept of 'One PC
per person' from 'One PC per house' concept. This is one of the main
reasons why there has been a steady rise in the sale of
notebooks/netbooks and decline in the sale of monitors. 3G and
gaming-enabled laptops are also factors responsible for this.

One of the key ingredients of an
engulfing 3D experience is support of high response time, better
contrast ratio, high brightness and high refresh rate apart from
others. Only due to the LED technology we have been able to leverage
this technology for amazing 3D Samsung range of TVs. The same
technology subset can later be introduced in the monitor segment for
3D imaging. Since the technology vs India market is still not mature
enough, due to the lack of availability of the local content we might
just have to wait for some time to get this technology here. Taking
care of the interests of its partners has always been a priority for
Samsung and time and again we have proven ourselves as a 'partner
friendly' and 'partner centric' organization. Monitors are more of a
number product
and less of a margin product and this holds true for any run rate
product in the market. Maintaining profitability, competitive edge
and continuous RnD innovation asks for maintaining a fine balance
between harsh market conditions and profitability for the stake
holders. Still we would be coming up with interesting schemes for our
channel partners thereby helping them to remain interested in our
business. External threats would always be there but all we have to
do is to be what we are as an organization and do what we are good
at-making quality products at the right price point for our end
customers.

Marketwise, our share would grow by
three percent this quarter due to the approaching festive season.
Productwise LED monitors, multi-function monitors, full HD displays
and many more would help us in keeping the market share bigger
towards our side. At the same time, the competition would be fierce
as ever. Overall, it would be an interesting year for us and
technology, and ultimately for the end-customer who would benefit due
to competitive pricing and technological innovations.