Intel identifies growth opportunity for channel

MUMBAI, INDIA: As part of its growth strategy, Intel has identified segments, including manufacturing, government, energy supply, construction, broadband, education, construction and health care to expand further. The vendor also sees the netbook and notebook market in India as promising, and is of the view that the above segments will give its channel partners an opportunity to expand further.

Giving an insight into Intel’s growth in India so far, Steve Dallman, VP—Sales and Marketing Group and GM—Worldwide Reseller Channel, Intel pointed, “The Quadcore chip is being sold more by the channels when compared to the MNCs. Even in the solid state category, more than 50-60 percent chips are being shipped by the channel.”

Dallman further mentioned that Intel Westware, which is the advanced version of Nahelam, offers a host of features, including security, and will offer huge scope of expansion to the channel partners.

In view of the channel’s contribution to its overall business, Intel has outlined several opportunities that the channel partners can tap in order to expand their businesses further. “The Atom chip was targeted at the emerging markets. However, what we noticed is that most of the netbooks have gone into mature markets. Its in the companion PC market that netbooks have gone, and even in India people want to have it as a companion PC. The strategy for Atom was not to create a low-cost PC, but we wanted it to get into hand-held devices, mobile device and we see a huge scope for that in India. We will extend the atom family further which will give the channel partners an opportunity to expand further.”

Dallmon further informed that Intel has sold more Atom on the desktop in India than anywhere else and is now looking at getting into the hinterland. “We did lots of promotions and advertisement for Atom. We started with zero percent and have reached about 500 percent in terms of shipments for Atom. Intel has grown by about 30-40 percent due to Atom but this has not taken us away from the rest of our business. Our other business has grown about 33 percent.”