Intel’s Chairman Andy Bryant recently admitted that the company had lost its way in the transition from PC to other computing devices such as smartphones and tablets.

The chipmaker has been a late starter when it comes to catching up with the fast changing consumer behaviour leading to declining market share. But now Intel wants to change things around and go back to its glory days when it ruled the PC world.

Business Line met Sandeep Aurora - Director, Marketing & Market Development, Intel on the company’s game plan in 2014.

Why didn’t your ultrabook strategy work out?

If you look at thin and light as a category and if you go to a store today, you will not see any laptop which is 2-inch thick and weighing 5 kg. So even though ultrabook as a category may not have taken off, it has achieved the desired objective when it comes to changing the look and feel of computers.

Ultrabook was bit ahead of its time but if you look at 2012-13, thin and light as a form factor has surpassed ultrabook sales. Our aim was to bring sexiness back in the PC category. I think it achieved that objective.

All-in-One has also failed to catch the imagination of users. What went wrong?

Like ultrabook is the innovation in mobile, all-in-one is the innovation on desktop. What has happened is that the innovation, which was required did not happen. Innovation is not happening at that speed. Desktop market is still assembled. Also, All-in-One did not get due retail space.

‘Intel Inside’ campaign was a huge hit in the PC era. What are you doing to make brand Intel as popular with users when it comes to smartphone and tablet?

Our solution on smartphones and tablets are just rolling out. We will eventually hit critical mass in 2014. We have a new campaign called Look Inside. It enables us to tell the story right. It tells consumers to be worried about what’s inside the device. You will see one or two large brands coming with phones with Intel inside in 2014. We are sure 2014 will be a turnaround year for us.

How do you see Intel doing in the Internet of Things?

We are in the middle of it. We want to be in any place where there’s a bit of computing. We are not a PC company anymore. We will be across wearables to data centre servers.

What are you doing to increase awareness about computers in general?

Fifteen years ago, we started a programme called The Teach programme. What we figured out was that children were afraid to use computers because their teachers had not used it. So we started training teachers telling them it's one more tool for you. We have trained 1.9 million teachers in India and each impact 300-400 kids every year. We are also doing curriculum development.

Even simple things like multi-core were not being taught in engineering colleges. We brought it to colleges, which make the students ready for job market. It’s also good for Intel because we want to hire engineers. It’s also good for business because when kids learn how to use a PC they may buy one. But more than us, it's good for the country.

How are you strengthening the distribution and retail chain?

We are training them on how to talk to users and understand what their needs are. We have launched a programme where we have trained 11,000 retail executives in 5,000 stores. This ranges from telling them what are the different kind of devices and what are the different use purposes so that they can give buying advice to users. We work closely with OEMs in this. We have a tie up with NIIT for this training.

>thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in

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