Intel is a world leader in computing innovation. The Company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. In 2014, Intel has increased its focus on the tablet space globally. In an interview with Sandeep Aurora, Director, Marketing and Market Development, Intel South Asia about the tablet market and Intel’s new initiative on this space. Excerpts of the interview:
What is the broad strategy that Intel is having towards the tablet segment in India as well as globally?
Tablets represent a big, growth market and we are targeting to ship 40Mu this year, globally. Based on the success of Bay Trail as well as the product and customer agreements we have announced at Mobile World Congress, we have a rich pipeline of tablet and phablet design wins, which put us on a path to meet our goal. In India, we are also engaged with a few local OEMs to bring Intel powered tablets to market.
What kind of market share does ‘Intel Inside’ driven tablets have today, when compared with Android or Apple driven tablets?
As a company policy we do not comment on figures pertaining to market share. At the same time, I would like to clarify that today our customers are shipping tablets based on Intel architecture running both Android as well as Windows.
Please share your strategy to garner more market share in this space?
In 2014, Intel has increased its focus on the tablet space globally. Locally Intel is partnering with select local OEMs such as Micromax to launch innovative new devices in the mobility segment. This is part of our overall strategy to increase our market share in the country. Key to success here is design wins and we are committed to bringing innovating form factors at attractive price points, offered by multinational as well as local OEMs. In India, we will not only focus on the consumers, but also the education segment as well as the large government tender deals.
In the coming quarters, how does Intel look at this segment of converging segment of tablets — more and more technologies are getting packed inside one device and many vendors are jumping on the bandwagon today?
As the tablet market matures, vendors are trying to cater to different consumer preferences in terms of price, screen size, OS, calling features and so on. And as you see the market evolving, we are also going to see the mainstream players bringing a great experience at really good price points in the market. Case in point is Dell that recently launched their Venue range of tablets powered by Intel which is available in the market for less than Rs 10,000.
At present how many brands support Intel platform for tablets on global scale? What is Intel doing to increase the effort here?
At the MWC, several of our customers announced new products based on our processors and modems, including ASUS’ new Fonepad with Intel LTE, and the HP ElitePad 1000 and HP ProPad 600, the first 64-bit Windows tablets with BayTrail. Intel also announced a multi-year agreement with Lenovo to introduce new Intel-based mobile devices across a variety of smartphone and tablet form factors spanning value to performance market segments. Foxconn and Intel are teaming up to drive the broader, global availability of high-quality, affordable Intel-based Android tablets. Intel will provide Atom processors and communications platforms for a range of Foxconn products beginning this year. Apart from these, we already have Dell and Acer that have their Intel powered tablets running on Intel available in the Indian market.
In our interactions with the channel community, it has come out that channel partners are becoming more comfortable and eager to sell tablets / phablets and hence sales of traditional PC or laptop is coming down heavily. What is your opinion on this?
Channels business run on volumes and the growing tablet/phablet gives them an opportunity to sell more to the consumers. Tablets are definitely hot right now, but PC has its own relevance and in my opinion, both will continue to co-exist in a consumer’s home. In fact, if you look at smaller cities, there is a very healthy desktop demand that channels cater to.
Intel is largely seen as a traditional PC and Laptop powering company and not a tablet or phablet organization do you agree on this?
Intel continues to maintain its position as the global leader when it comes to processors for traditional PCs. With changing market realities, we are focusing on Mobility as a growth business for us and making the necessary investments in our development, in market expansion, sales and marketing to win share. And we are making good progress on the product front.
