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HP India is planning to concentrate more on the upcountry market with its newly launched notebook - Compaq Presario P
2514, which is priced at Rs 39,900. The target audience for this product would be small office and the
home segment and the company expects that this product would ensure that HP laptops reach more B and C class cities.
According to Rajiv Grover, Country Manager, Consumer Portables, HP India, "The Indian notebook market is growing at 85
to 90 per cent per fiscal and this initiated us to launch a product which small offices and home segment
can buy. I expect this product to do well in the metros but honestly I feel that P 2514 would be the product for the upcountry market and we see lots of
resellers showing interest in this notebook." Here it must be noted that two years back the ratio of notebook and PC was 1:50 and today the ratio is 1:25
and this clearly suggests that more and more people are going mobile today.
Rajiv feels that it won't be possible for HP to reduce the prices of notebooks further because the component prices are not
expected to decrease, but he is hopeful that if WTO is implemented then prices will come down
sharply.
P 2514 is today available with 120 HP Premium retail partners and about 200 micro retail partners. HP has an overall
strength of 600 micro retail partners across the country. The company expects that from the current
strength of 200 micro retail partners selling this notebook, another 250 will be further added, which will ensure more growth. "I feel more and more
small resellers would now like to sell this sub-40k notebook as it is available at much low price tag and more importantly it offers good margins
for the channel partners. So, the more you sell the more you get, which is today not the case with the PC market where the margins are considerable
very low," Rajiv pointed out.
According to IDC, in 2004 first quarter, HP had 33 per cent market share in the notebook segment and the company expects
to grow by at least 90 per cent in this fiscal. "We are growing according to the market trend and hope that
this fiscal we keep up to the market movement, which will ensure that we retain the kind of market share we presently enjoy in the notebooks
business," Rajiv sums up.
Atanu Kumar Das
New Delhi Page(s) 1
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