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Chitra Phadnis

BANGALORE, Dec. 25

A curious thing is happening in the "unbranded" PC market. A large number of big brands are entering it.

"Today, 75 per cent of the components are branded," says assembler Mr Mahesh Rathod. In the past six to eight months, users have become choosy, asking specifically for Mercury speakers, monitors from LG and Samsung and printers from HP and TVS, said Mr Rathod.

Other than the low-end components such as a keyboard, a mouse or consumables like cartridges, everything else is branded. The big names tapping the potential in the lower end of the PC market are eating into the market share of the small Indian companies who were supplying components. Samtel, which manufactures monitors, for instance, has been making losses.

``After all, if all critical components such as PC Monitors, hard disk drives and CD-ROMs/ Writers are backed by a warranty direct from Samsung, its like buying any other MNC brand," said Mr Moninder Jain, National Marketing Head of Samsung Electronics India Information and Telecommunication Ltd (SEIIT), which has been very visible in the assembler market.

In the process, the quality in the assembled market has gone up. Retail chain Vivek Ltd's Director, Mr Shankar, believes that consumers have gone back to the assembler market. "The entry of players such as Samsung and Netkracker have improved the quality of the assembler market," he said. There has been a 10 per cent dip in branded PC sales from the store, he had told Business Line a little before the Diwali season.

Samsung, for instance, held free service camps, an initiative which has "bolstered consumer confidence in assembled PCs,'' according to Mr Jain. The emphasis has been on educating the customer as well as the assembler. ``In our opinion, price is not the best way to explode the market", he said.

Samsung also invests in "selling up" and getting assemblers to provide better products. The company helped the market move up from 14-inch to 15-inch monitors and is now moving towards 17-inch screens.

With the quality going up, the price difference between the branded and the assembler market is closing, but is still significant at 35-40 per cent. This is, however, not as much as the 60-65 per cent difference that there was last year. The quality, on the other hand, has improved in the last two years, say industry sources.

The realisation that the cheap imported stuff is not always reliable has come in and in a year or two everything will become branded, predicted Mr Rathod.

Where the assembler market loses out is on the after-sales service, though some assemblers have started to offer it. By 2005, when the ITA comes into force, equations will change once again and "there will be another fight,'' said Mr Rathod.

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