Dell to expand into smaller towns

The company, which now runs around 270 exclusive stores in about 170 cities, will open another 130 stores by the end of the year.

Dell is aggressively planning to increase its pie in the growing domestic personal computer business.

It is planning to open more exclusive stores in smaller cities to widen the market penetration.

The company, which now runs around 270 exclusive stores in about 170 cities, will open another 130 stores by the end of the year.

With this, it would expand its reach to another 30 new cities, taking the total number of exclusive stores to 400.

The company’s plan to expand into smaller cities is based on the traffic it receives on the company’s official online sales portal.

“We want to increase the number of our exclusive stores to smaller cities. Through our exclusive stores, we want to give our prospective customers the feel of Dell technology. We will open 400 exclusive stores by the end of the year,” said Dell India Executive Director and General Mangaer (Consumer and Small Business) P. Krishnakumar.

“With the increase in smartphone penetration, we are seeing more first time Internet users from Tier 3 and Tier 5 cities visiting our online store,” he said.

Dell at present occupies the second slot in the domestic PC market with a share of 19.1 per cent after HP.

According to market research firm IDC, India offers a huge opportunity for PC makers. The overall PC shipments from India stood at 2.55 million units in the second quarter of 2014, a quarter-on-quarter growth of 23.6 per cent. Other than the exclusive stores and online channel, Dell sells its products through various multi-brand stores and large format retailers such as Reliance and Croma. The company sells its products through 11,300 outlets in 1,100 cities, and intends to increase it to 3,900 cities soon.

Tablet strategy

In second half of September, Dell launched its new tablets with features such as voice calling. With the range of tablets priced between Rs.11,999 and Rs.18,999, the company expects to grow the market share in the segment.

The company, which has around 3.5 per cent market share in the tablet market, aims to increase its presence in the voice and WiFi-based tablet business.

“We believe that in India, tablet space is as big and important as the notebook segment, and we see a huge opportunity for us,” Mr Krishnakumar said.