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ELECTRONICS manufacturers are trying to get a share of the the growing electronics market in Cebu.
The electronics industry had experienced tremendous growth in the Cebu market in the last eight to ten years, said Joel L. Pe, Silicon Valley president and chief executive officer.
Pe gave this observation during the recent opening of Toshiba concept store in SM City Cebu, where top executives of the electronics company from Singapore also see Cebu as a major growth area for Toshiba Philippines.
?This is only the third concept store of Toshiba in the country with two located both in Manila, SM Megamall and SM North Edsa,? Pe said adding that the company don't just open concept shops anywhere without doing a feasibility study on the traffic and profitability of the market.
Krislyn Chia of Toshiba Singapore said that Toshiba Philippines has been doing good in terms of sales and is constantly growing despite the reported crisis last year.
?Toshiba Philippines has very big potential in terms of the market where we also see Cebu as a major growth area for our company being like a gateway to all other provinces in Visayas and Mindanao,? Chia said.
Pe, whose company has partnered with Toshiba for the opening of the concept shop said that the company has plans of opening more concept stores in four other locations in the country aside from Cebu and Manila.
While Cebu market has mostly categorized as mostly in the mainstream, Pe said that the concept shop will carry a full range of products from the basic and mainstream up to the premium ones.
?Cebu market has always been into the mainstream products which are priced from P29,999 to P35,999. These are the middle-end products, somewhere not very low end and not very high end but still has that combination of usability and durability,? Pe said.
This trend is true to all computer brands there is in the country now with computing design made affordable and yet durable like Lenovo which just launched a product line specifically for SMB market or Small and Medium Businesses market.
Vicky Agorilla, country general manager of Lenovo Philippines and the president of the Information and Technology Association of the Philippines, told reporters that SMB is the new battle ground of the electronics company today.
?We recognized SMB to be a very promising market that is why we are launching a new line of products to cater to their needs,? Agorilla said during the launching of Lenovo's ThinkPad Edge series laptops and Thinkpad X100e, which is an 11.6 ultra portable laptop model.
Agorilla said that worldwide figures of Lenovo sales surpassed their 17% projected growth last year achieving 42% growth which she said Lenovo Philippines contributed much due to the bigger growth especially in the SMB market.
?In the Philippines, we have more growth in terms of sales in our consumer line products compared to our commercial lines and this is because of the SMB market which includes companies with only 500 employees the most.?
Agorilla added that for this year, the industry is expecting around 45 million computer units to be produced this year for the SMB market and will double in 2011.
Notebook PCs, however, will not replace desktop PCs according to Agorilla citing the growth of other industries in the country that still requires desktop PCs. ?Desktop computers will still be profitable. For one, the BPO industry is booming and they usually use desktop PCs for their floor operations.?
Francis Cudar, 4P manager for Commercial Businesses of Lenovo Philippines, informed that this is the second time that they launched product lines for SMB adding that the first product line that they launched for SMB which is the SL series, are doing great in the market.
