Resellers upbeat about USB products; thumb-drives creating wave

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is the latest trend and buzzword in IT business

today. Recently, USB products, especially thumb-drives, IRDA (infra-red) and

blue-tooth devices are finding great acceptance in the market, thanks to the

mobile revolution and increasing requirement for portable storage devices, along

with other life-style solution. The market is witnessing a steady growth

month-on-month and from the last quarter, the industry is registering a

significant growth mainly due to the drastic fall in prices of products. In the

last couple of months, thumb-drive prices alone were revised four-five times to

make it available for less than half-the-cost it was sold earlier.

No doubt, USB products are opening a plethora of opportu-nities for channel

partners in business, besides creating a new avenue for growth and

profitability. Today, all IT products are USB supported and even peripherals

like printer, webcam and scanner come with USB interface. However, trendy USB

products such as thumb-drives, IRDA (infra-red) and blue-tooth devices are more

promising for channel partners in business. The huge business opportunity

available here made many leading MNC brands such as Sony, Iomega, Transcend and

Umax, among others, to launch their own range of products, while import brands

such as iBall, Enter (Fortune Market-ing), Zebronics (Top Notch), Intex, Tech

Com (Sagarmatha) and Himalayan Times are also fighting for their share of pie.

Vendors and resellers alike are quite upbeat about the current trend and the

changing buyer-pattern who want to try out new technology products and ready to

spend the extra money for it, is giving fillip to the industry. However, the

erratic fall in prices and compe-tition from grey market is a concern and cause

to worry for the traders.

"Today, an entry-level (128MB) thumb-drive is avail-able for Rs 850-900,

which was selling at Rs 2,000 till recently. The major price drop happened over

the last couple of months and products from Taiwan and Korea are flooding the

market," said Tejinder Singh, Director, Access.

The action is happening on educating the customer also and channels feel it

is a must to develop the market. "Only, of late, channels have started

showing some interest in educating the customers about the advantages of USB

products and mass consumption is yet to happen. Buyers are ready to spend extra

money to get sophisticated products and it is the reseller who has to take it to

the customer," said Naresh Kanted, Director of Sagar Infosystems.

Clubbed with price drop, the multi-function activities of gadgets are also

driving the sales of these tech products. "Today, a thumb-drive comes with

an MP3 player and a voice recorder (up to 18 hours), besides having a digicam in

it, all available for around Rs 3,800. Also, thumb-drives are available in

higher capacity of up to 1GB for Rs 5,500-6,000 in the market today, which was

earlier quoted at Rs 14,000 about six-months back," said Navin Sethia,

Director of Delta Peripherals. Even, portable HDDs (pocket-sized) with a storage

capacity of up to 40GB, mainly used along with laptop, is available for Rs

5,500, which is a USB product. "Everything is USB supported from mouse to

keyboard to floppy drives to hubs/switches, in IT business, today," he

added.

USB as a technology offers lot of advantage to the users in terms of speed

(data transfer speed), convenience and portability. "Today, the role of

multi-media products in our lives has increased and we are exposed to more

life-style products now. At one point, these gadgets need to talk to each other

for transfer of voice & data, and USB plays a big role here," said Amit

Gupta, Regional Manager (Chennai), Fortune Marketing (P) Ltd. The mobile

revolution and laptop boom had pushed the growth of IRDA (infra-red) and

blue-tooth USB products. "Blue-tooth products are more superior to

infra-red offering better speed, operational range and networking

capability," he added.

Although, the market is quite upbeat about the business potential but

resellers feel more education and awareness only will drive the business.

"Recently, we have conducted a workshop among the IT professionals to

educate them about USB products and the ranges available in the industry today.

Surprisingly, many of them are not aware of the options and ranges available in

USB," said Jithender Kumar Tatia, Director, Vivek Traders.

"Buyers are mainly concer-ned about the price than qual-ity of the

product. Currently, the market is flooded with China and Taiwan products, mainly

brought in by grey operators who do not offer any after-sales support. Only

reputed brands in business offer one-year warranty and quality support for the

customers and in the long run, branded products alone survive in the

market."

"Only in thumb-drive busi-ness branded players are facing tough

competition from grey operators, who slash prices in adhoc manner. As

thumb-drive is a very small device and easy to carry, grey operators do illegal

importing through carry-bag operators and ready to sell it for any price.

Genuine players like us are not able to stock the goods as erratic fall of price

in the market will lead to a major loss in business. Inventory management has

become very critical factor for players like us," said Rajesh Doshi,

Director, Top Notch Infotronix (India).

S Gopikrishna


Chennai