Direct-to-Home PC Market in the Philippines

I was invited to the opening of Rising Sun Computers’ new branch along Taft Avenue yesterday. They were one of our sponsors during the recent Philippine Blog Awards and I thought it would be nice to finally meet owners Angela and Jack Conti. They had that supposedly new Wowowee co-host Valerie Concepcion for some autograph signing too.

Anyway, during my discussion with their sales manager, they mentioned that they’re also doing direct-to-home PC sales for the Visayas and Mindanao regions. Despite only having 2 stores in the metro, they’re serving the growing market for home PC deliveries. There are two other companies that are doing this aggressively and one that comes to mind is BuyQube. Yeah, Villman’s been also doing online sales but it doesn’t seem fit to get one online when you can get it from one of their nearby retail stores.

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Besides, most PC stores would still charge you an additional 6% for credit card usage. Clearly, that DTI initiative on the One Price Tag law hasn’t really do much help.

So, the question becomes — is there really a growing market? Dell has been successful with this in the US and even in some of our Asian neighbors such as Malaysia. With the cut-throat pricing wars among local PC retail stores, I don’t think Dell would survive here (think very thin marginal profits and expensive courier fees). Yeah, Dell Philippines can afford to operate their call center here but I don’t think they can withstand the fierce competition in the PC market.

So, what’s to become of the direct-to-home PC sales? That remains to be seen.