Samsung Electronics ties up with Salora

agencyfaqs! News Bureau

NEW DELHI, September 16

The Rs 550-crore Samsung Electronics India Pvt Ltd (SEIP) has entered into a marketing alliance with Salora International Ltd. Salora would be the third national distributor for SEIP laser printers, besides Integral Computers and Savex Computers.

Attributing the credit for driving up the market share in a short period of time to its distributors, James Dong, director-IT, SEIP, said, "We hope to further expand and strengthen our position in the market with the appointment of Salora."

Official sources claim that the tie-up is a strategic move to increase SEIP's share in the laser printer market. Salora, with one of the bigger distribution networks across the country, will serve SEIP through all its IT dealers.

In India, approximately 70,000 laser printers are sold every year. SEIP made its foray into the laser printer market, late last year and has a minute 2 per cent share of the total market currently. This is expected to go up to 10 per cent by December 2000.

The company expects the laser printer market to grow by about 30 per cent by next year. SEIP, since it has a lower base, hopes to outpace market growth. The company is aiming for a sales target of more than 15,000 printers by next year end, which implies a more than 200 per cent growth for the company's laser business.

The current alliance, believes the SEIP brass, is a "win-win" proposition. While it will help the company leverage Salora's channel strength, Salora, in turn, will benefit from the large margins on SEIP's lasers for both distributors and dealers. Besides, since the SEIP's penetration base is low, and growth plans very aggressive, Salora will profit from the exponentially growing numbers.

SEIP is taking a host of other initiatives to increase its market share. It launched a nationwide free service campaign, the first of its kind, in August, for all Samsung IT and telecom products sold in the country.

Salora is already associated with SEIP in being the distributor for the latter's fax machines. The other products in the SEIP portfolio comprise of colour monitors, hard disk drives, laser printers, fax machines, electronic cash registers, cellular phones, key telephone systems and optical fibres. Salora is also the distributor for another Samsung group company, SEMCO for its IT peripherals like floppy drives, keyboards, speakers and PC camera.

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