Samsung India plans to re-enter Indian laptop market with six products

Samsung India, on Tuesday, announced that it is re-entering the notebook/laptop market, after a gap of eight years and is expecting a double-digit market share by end of this year.

The company is launching six new products on March 17 in this category including Galaxy Book2 Pro 360, Book2 Pro, Book2, Book2 360, Galaxy Book Go for students and Galaxy Book2 Business for enterprises. The products will be quite competitive in the pricing — between ₹40,000 and ₹1.2 lakh — as compared to its competitors.

“This is the beginning of our laptop journey back again and that is why we are looking to transform the way consumers look at personal computers (PCs). As we move forward in this journey, we are optimistic that we should be able to garner a double-digit share by end of this year,” Sandeep Poswal, General Manager and Head - New Computing Business, Samsung India, told BusinessLine.

He said Samsung has a strong consumer base in terms of the Galaxy (smartphone) users and with a differentiated offering that it is coming out with, the new entry into PC will be an interesting proposition for the consumers, he said.

Poswal said that one of the big reasons for Samsung to come back to the PC market is that, in the last two years, the PC shipment has grown exponentially in the Indian market during the pandemic because of work-from-home culture, especially in the convertible and ultra-slim category of laptops.

According to IDC, the share of convertible and ultra-slim grew 2.7X during 2019-21 and the global market grew 2X to $9.5 billion from 2019 to last year. The share of traditional laptops shrunk from 61 per cent to 13 per cent in this period.

Meanwhile, when asked about the issues of semiconductor chip shortages worldwide and if there would be any impact on deliveries, Poswal said, “In the short term, we do not see any challenges.”

Samsung will be importing the laptops for now, but is open to manufacture them in India as well at its Noida factory in the future.

The company will sell these products both online and offline at Samsung exclusive stores as well as multi-brand stores and its own online store, Amazon and Flipkart, Poswal added.

Published on March 15, 2022