|
PC kits for assemblers—can HP pull it off?
HP’s latest move is intriguing; if the company pulls
it off it will be the first MNC PC vendor to make money from sales of white-box
PCs, says Prashant L Rao
 |
HP wants first-time buyers who go in for PCs built
around this kit to opt for a branded PC the second time around, says Ravi
Swaminathan |
The neighbourhood assembler has traditionally dominated the Indian PC market.
Today, this is particularly true of the sub- Rs 30,000 segment. Lots of factors
contribute to this phenomenon, including prices that are typically a third below
that of a branded PC and the willingness of the local vendor to tweak the PC’s
configuration to your needs. In an interesting move, HP India has announced
‘Project Impact’; a programme to sell unbranded imported PC kits to
assemblers. HP calls this a component business and indeed it is supplying a
bare-bones bundle of chassis, motherboard, keyboard and mouse. It’s up
to the assembler to add the processor, hard drive, CD-ROM drive (though HP will
sell a colour matching CD drive) and monitor. HP has partnered with Redington,
which will distribute these kits to resellers. HP and Redington are targeting
200 assemblers in the southern states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh
in the pilot.
Better white-box computing experience
HP stresses the point that it screens components and there are little touches
such as a quiet CD-ROM drive. All too often assembled PCs tend to have optical
drives that make a racket as they spin.
The HP unit has six USB 2 ports, two in the front for easy access, which is
a good thing, even though some feel plugging USB cables at the front of the
PC mars its aesthetics. The onboard LAN feature is handy for a SOHO set-up.
HP expects SOHO and home buyers to go in for PCs assembled using its kit.
Unbranded and expensive
At Rs 32,990 for a configuration with a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 128 MB
RAM and a 40 GB hard drive, the kit is priced on the higher side. This at a
time when sub-Rs 20,000 branded PCs built around the AMD Athlon from HCL, Acer
and Zenith are entering the market. The lack of an AGP slot makes it unsuitable
for gaming. While sophisticated consumers are willing to pay a premium for a
branded PC, it is unlikely that they will do so for an unbranded box, no matter
how attractive it looks. While HP’s move seems to mirror Intel’s GID
campaign, there is a crucial difference. In the case of Intel, it was its Intel
Inside logo that made the difference. HP isn’t putting its logo on the
kits.
HP’s aim is to get first-time buyers who go in for PCs built around this
kit to opt for a branded PC the second time around. “We believe that customers
will convert to HP products in the second round of purchase,” says Ravi
Swaminathan, vice president, Personal Systems Group, HP India. This would have
been likely if there was some kind of branding (not necessarily the HP logo,
it could have been a freshly minted one) on the units but in the present unbranded
state, the conversion effect may be diluted.
On the plus side, assembled PCs built around the kit will be more reliable and
offer a better computing experience than a box put together with just about
any components available in the market. This should improve the image of white-box
PCs. There’s also a Linux based version that should sell for
Rs 28,990 to the end-customer. If HP succeeds in its gambit it would have segmented
the assembled PC market with vanilla PCs at one end and those built around its
kit at the other. The downside is that it could end up making the white-box
segment a more formidable competitor to its own PC brands.
prashant@expresscomputeronline.com
|
