The computer industry is “cautious” about the demand outlook for December quarter, after a stellar July-September showing in the laptop category, said Mr S. Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer of Acer India.
The cautious outlook for the current quarter is on account of the proposed increase in product prices - a result of rupee's sharp fall over the past few weeks - and also because, typically, demand tends to taper post festive season buying.
“For July-September quarter, we saw a ‘bump up' in the Netbook and notebook demand. We saw pick up in education and institutional purchases. Also the feedback that we got from some retailers suggested that consumers who were a bit distracted by tablets for about two quarter realised that it is not a first time device, hence, some demand came from there too,” he said.
He said that on a quarter-on-quarter comparison, the sales in September quarter was 25 per cent higher.
Incidentally, according to projections by hardware association MAIT, for 2010-2011, the total PC sales rose 16 per cent to 9.31 million units. MAIT further estimates that sales of PCs - desktops, notebooks and Netbooks – are expected to cross 12.6 million units during 2011-2012.
Terming the rupee's depreciation as a big disappointment for hardware players, Mr Rajendran said that the company too was contemplating a price hike for its products.
“We are considering a 6-10 per cent increase in the coming days,” he pointed out.
Elaborating on the strategy for India, he said, Acer would focus on segments such as education, Government, BFSI and Small and Medium Enterprises, in the enterprise category.
“In the consumer space, the smaller towns are really opening up for IT products. We want to touch 1,000 towns by the end of this year. We are currently at just over 700 towns,” he said.
Acer - which has desktops, notebooks and tablets in its product portfolio - on Tuesday launched the Acer Aspire S3, the world's thinnest Ultrabook.
An Ultrabook is in the category of thin and lightweight ultraportable laptop, defined by specifications from Intel Corporation and is powered by Intel Core processors.
The Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook integrates the features of notebooks and tablets.
Acer said its Ultrabooks pack-in performance, improved responsiveness and security in a thin form factor.