HP India forays into the assembler mkt

BANGALORE: HP India has announced that it will be supplying components to white box assemblers for the unbranded PC market in the country. The project, which is called Impact (International Modular Premium Assembled Component Technology), will be the first time a branded MNC is entering the non-branded segment of the PC market, which holds sway over nearly 70 percent of the PC market in the country.

By the project, HP will be providing a basic PC configuration and certain optional components to white box assemblers through the distributor, Redington, who will sell it wholesale to the local assemblers. The unit will consist of a chassis, motherboard, floppy disk drive, power supply, keyboard and mouse. Optional PC components include memory, hard disk drives, CRT monitors, CD-RW/DVD combo, CD-ROM and CD-RW drives.

"This is just a pilot project which can last upto six months. The units will be distributed in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka among an average 200 assemblers," said HP India Personal Systems Group VP Ravi Swaminathan.

He added that the project is part of a global initiative on HP’s part and India was the first country chosen for the pilot. He also added that the project was headed from Singapore and will be replicated in other parts of the globe depending on the success of the pilot project.

"With this project, we are looking to expand our business and our market base into the unbranded segment. We are targeting first time buyers who want affordability and the people who want flexibility in the customization of their computers with this initiative. And when they look to graduate to the branded market later, HP will be there with its products too," said Swaminathan.

He added that the project did not imply any shift of focus from HP’s branded segment and the two will be complementary to each other. According to the company, the motherboard is powered by the Intel 845 GV chipset and though they do not have any agreement or connection with the Intel GID program they might be looking into it as and when the market gets along. They did not discount the possibility of a similar look at agreements with AMD also in the future though none exist at the moment.

(CNS)