Intel's new channel category for netbooks

GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA: At the Intel Solutions Summit held in Gold Coast, Australia, Navin Shenoy, VP—Sales and Marketing and GM of Intel Asia-Pacific talked about the company’s plans to create a new category of partners to sell nettops using Atom processors, which will bring down the prices of the machines to sub Rs 10,000.

In the first quarter this year, Intel ran a pilot program for nettops in 10 cities working with select channel partners, aiming the product at first-time buyers. Now it will broad-base this program to include more partners.

“We brought the various components like chassis, motherboards, processors and in some cases even the operating systems together to give systems integrators a hands-on demonstration on how to build these nettops. Now we are ready to go mainstream with it,” Shenoy added. To further create demand for netbooks, the company is talking with telecom companies to drive down the cost of broadband connectivity.

There is a reason why Intel is investing so heavily in the channel despite the downturn. In the past few months the company has noticed that its channels sales have far beaten its direct business with OEMs. “We have realized that the go-to-market time for our partners is much faster and they are able to position the products better to customers because they are directly in touch with them,” said Steve Dallman, VP—Sales and Marketing Group and GM of Worldwide Reseller Channel Organization, Intel.

While Intel’s direct customer sale out in the 45 nanometre product grew by 90 percent between Q1 2008 to Q1 2009, the channel business for the same product line grew by 95 percent. In the Quad Core too, direct sales between H1 2007 to 2H 2008 grew by 19 percent while the channel’s sales for that period grew by 22 percent.

Between Q1 2004 to Q1 2008, the number of channel customers buying regularly from Intel has remained more or less constant and today the company boasts of over 52,000 active partners globally.