Taiwanese major Asus’ entry into the commercial PC market in India with the launch of 11 models on Monday is a part of its long-term strategy to become the leading player in the overall PC market here, said Dinesh Sharma, Business Head, Commercial PC and Smartphone, System Business Group, ASUS India.
Asus considers India its home market, and is part of the cohort of top focus markets, he said.
“In the overall PC business, the commercial business will have to contribute because at the end of the day, it contributes to about 50 per cent of the market,” Sharma told
Among top 3
ASUS Expert Series of Commercial PCs launched on Monday, which are designed for enterprises and businesses, include the ASUS ExpertBook range of six laptops, the ASUSPRO ExperCenter range of three Desktops, as well as two ‘All in Ones'. While the new set of launches will be imported, manufacturing in India is something that we are looking at from an overall perspective and we definitely support the Make in India initiative of the government, said Sharma.
Asus is already part of the top three consumer PC brands in India, and its goal to become the leading player in this business can happen much sooner, in a year or so, said Sharma. “With that happening and the brand momentum also building up, it should help us to scale up the commercial business also pretty fast,” he said.
On the company’s strategy for the commercial PC segment, Sharma said that it is building a “very robust product range which will cater to all the segments of the market”. With these new models, Asus India is already catering to around 97 per cent of the demand in the commercial PC market, he said. The company is also focussing on creating a better value proposition for customers. “Every single product of ours in a single price range is actually better than our competition,” he claimed.
Strengthening the team
“There are a number of new product ranges, services and solutions we have built for the market and to support these, and to cater to the different channel needs of the enterprise business, we have developed a completely new structure within the organisation headed by me - it will be a completely new vertical catering to the enterprise business,” Sharma explained.
He described India as a “super critical” market for Asus, pointing out how it has a market share of more than 16 per cent in the overall consumer PC business in the country.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been an increasing shift towards laptops from desktops, with the share of laptops growing from more than 50 per cent to over 75 per cent, Sharma said. “Globally, the demand for PCs has grown. And with that kind of growth in demand, it has impacted the overall supply chain. At Asus, we are quite well planned for a major growth in India, so we have been able to keep our supply up and meet the demand largely which exists in the market.”