Dell tries to grab more laptop share from business and CIOs

Dell Latitude for CIOs
Essar Group CIO Jayantha Prabhu is the new brand ambassador for Dell laptop PCs in India as the US-based devices maker is eager to capture more share from HP and Lenovo in the business laptop market.

Information on willingness of enterprise CIOs to purchase Dell Latitude – powered by Intel Core processors – and other competing brands is not publicly known.

The fact that Dell is trying to add CIO community and other business leaders to its target list in its latest advt. campaign reflects that Dell wants to sell more PCs to business segment and compete with HP and Lenovo.

Amazon, an e-commerce site, has listed Dell Latitude 7280 i5 7th Generation (7300) 16GB 256GB Windows 10 at an MRP of Rs 130,000. The revised price of the Dell laptop was Rs 95,000. But Amazon is currently selling for Rs 89,000 in India. The significant price change indicates that Dell is realizing the value for money approach of business leaders.

The size of the India PC market in Q3 2017 was 3.03 million including consumer PC market of 1.51 million units and commercial PC market of 1.52 million units.

Dell and HP were earlier known for their presence among youth population in India. Lenovo was popular among both business and retail buyers.

The Indian PC market was dominated by HP and Lenovo, ahead of Dell in the third quarter of 2017, according to IDC.

Gartner says the market leaders in the global PC market are HP, Lenovo, Dell and Apple in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Dell’s PC shipments grew slightly Q4 2017. Dell did well in EMEA, Asia Pacific and Latin America, but it had weak results in North America. Generally, Dell has put a higher priority on profitability over market share.

Dell was the victim of the overall slowdown in the Indian economy.

In the Indian PC market, Dell slipped to third position with 20 percent market share in Q3 2017. Dell’s PC volume fell 2.6 percent in overall consumer segment. Dell had faced stock unavailability during the latter half of Q2 2017.

Dell volumes from business segment fell 3.5 percent despite spending from its key enterprise accounts along with a large number of back to back orders spilled over from the previous quarter.

Navkendar Singh, associate research director at IDC India, earlier said PC brands should look forward for a few major deals in the commercial segment, backed by education projects across different states and spending from BFSI and IT/ITeS verticals.

PC growth drivers in India in Q3 were education projects in states like Tamil Nadu, Assam, etc. along with demand from SMBs after the implementation of the new Goods and Services Tax (GST), according to IDC.

PC rivals in India

HP Inc. maintained its leadership position in the India PC market with 31.1 percent share in Q3 2017. HP Inc. posted 30.2 percent growth due to a state-owned education project along with strong consumer demand. HP Inc. offered partner-focused, consultative training to address SMBs with new GST-ready solutions which was coupled with invoicing software by KPMG.

Lenovo took the second spot, with a 24.1 percent market share in the India PC market in Q3 2017. The consumer PC business grew at 30.9 percent, with a focus on expanding online and modern retail channels. Excluding special projects, Lenovo grew by 5.4 percent year on year, aided by GST-ready machines along with increased and spill over spending from enterprises across verticals.

Global PC market

HP Inc. moved into the No. 1 position in Q4 2017, as its shipments grew 6.6 percent, and its market share totaled 22.5 percent. HP showed growth in all regions, including the challenging U.S. market.

Lenovo experienced decline in shipments for the fourth consecutive quarter. Lenovo achieved moderate growth in EMEA and Asia Pacific, but shipments declined in North America.

The strategy of Dell to enhance channel presence, associate with CIOs, improvement in quality of devices has the potential to take on HP and Lenovo in India. But positioning the Dell laptop brand for business may take more time.

Image source: Dell

Baburajan K

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