Philips now adopts the OEM route

With the shipments of Philips keyboards and mouse reaching the Indian shores,
the vendor has had a change of plan in its marketing strategy called ‘Visibility
Philips’, which was announced in November last year.

Clarified Sanjay Maheshwari, Head (Distribution-PCP), Philips India Ltd,
"There has been a change of plan because, we thought it was wise enough to
first create a brand value in the market. We are supplying to OEMs presently
like Priya who would be providing it with their newly-launched PC kits. When the
channels see the products, the need will be created and at least for the next
six months, Philips would be adopting the OEM route. Philips will be looking at
OEMs dealing with more than 500 plus PCs. One of the reasons, we adopted the OEM
route was because of the change in the duty structure."

Philips will be immediately launching keyboards and mouse, which will be
followed by optical storage devices in April. As reported earlier, Philips had
planned to launch cabinets but has currently deferred it. The Mumbai-based MNC
major is mainly known for its LCD monitors in India. Therefore this is the first
time that Philips will be getting into a new product segment. Earlier, the
reason given by Maheshwari to venture into this segment was to target the large
assembler market especially in small towns, as markets in metros have stagnated.

Nancy Sudheer

Mumbai