That came as a surprise. Read from the Inquirer that Dell Philippines is targeting the PC retail market in the country. Is the Philippine market for desktop PCs huge enough for Dell to join in the fierce competition that’s already fought by Acer, IBM, HP and Lenovo?
Dell claims that they already own 21% of the PC market in the Philippines, based on analyst figures, which includes desktop PCs and Intel-based servers (Dell PowerEdge servers).
My guess is that a huge chunk of that comes from bulk purchases of call centers and servers for data centers.
In an interview, Barry Bunyi, Dell Philippines country manager, said Dell was likely to choose a retail partner to serve the local market. This retail strategy is part of Dell’s plan to target consumers and small business users. Locally, Dell sells mostly to corporate customers through resellers.
There’s no definite time line for this according to Bunyi but I reckon that once we see a dedicated retail website for Dell Philippines, that’s the time when they’ve formally entered the retail market. Dell is very popular in the US for carving a huge market in the direct-to-home PC business. It has also penetrated other nearby Asian countries like Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.
I first discussed about the viability of Direct to Home PC business during my talked with local PC retail store Rising Sun. It’s also interesting to know if that 5-6% credit card charges being added by stores like PCX will be finally abolished considering that it’s one of the reasons most people resist in using their credit cards.
Will Dell successfully sell to the average Juan dela Cruz? Will there be an online store we can actually shop for bargains? Would be interesting to see how they’ll manage to do that.
that’s a great news…weeeeeeeew