Taiwanese smartphone and electronics major Asus is working to expand its presence in offline retail and plans to add about more 1,000 retail points over the next year after witnessing continuous strong demand in the consumer and gaming segments. Currently, Asus products are available at over 6,000 retail points along with online channels.
Arnold Su, Head of Consumer and Gaming PC (System Business Group), Asus India Business, said, "Post lifting of lockdown, the demand continues to be strong. From about 2.5 lakh units a month, the sales for the industry have doubled and the trend is expected to continue for some time as people continue to work and study from home."
Su also said the company saw 39 per cent growth in October 2020 over the same month in 2019. He added that gaming has been a major growth driver within the consumer PC segment in the last few months, especially in the festive month of October.
He said, "We want to continue this strong momentum. One of the reasons for our strong performance is the outreach we made in the past few months - both online and offline. We have 120 exclusive stores (Asus Exclusive Stores or AES) in India, and are present in premium shop in shops (100 at the end of September) and smaller points of sale at various dealer points."
In February 2020, Asus started onboarding its offline retail partners on a digital platform to help them connect with customers. "All these efforts are bearing fruits for us and we have been able to grow our share in the Indian market. While we continue to focus on bringing an expansive feature-packed portfolio of products across price points, we also want to ensure customers can easily procure these devices," said Su.
Su added, "This will include taking the number of AES to 200 (from 120), premium shop-in-shops to 2,000 (from 1,100) along with expansion of dealer shops as well."
According to IDC, the Indian PC market (desktops, notebooks, and workstations) saw 9.2 per cent year-on-year growth in the July-September 2020 quarter and managed to ship 3.4 million units as the demand for e-learning and remote working sky-rocketed.
(With inputs from PTI)