The days of marketplace domination by multinational branded personal computers (PCs), notebook computers and even servers are numbered. Local brands have made significant inroads into the market, because they offer many benefits and advantages over their international counterparts, says Andre Rossouw, a business manager at Rectron.
He examines the current positioning of local brands - and their potential for the future.
Multinational brands have dominated the desktop personal computer (PC), notebook PC and server markets for many years, despite local opposition. But times are changing as smaller companies (SMEs, SMMEs), private and SoHo users and the gaming sector get into line to support local offerings.
All that remains for the international brands is the enterprise market, which today is not as strong as it used to be from both size and influence perspectives.
What`s more, its loyalty to international brands is slipping as more emphasis is placed on "buying South African" in the face of growing broad-based economic empowerment (BEE) requirements.
Desktop PCs
In the desktop PC market, local brands are winning the war with their international counterparts. Most reliable estimates give local brands a 50% share of the market - with predictions that the 60% mark will be reached by early 2006.
The key drivers of this trend include initiatives by Intel and AMD to persuade dealers to promote locally assembled PCs using their chipsets. The major advantage is that users can tailor a machine to suit their exact requirements in terms of memory and hard drive capacities, central processor unit (CPU) and graphics card speeds, and peripheral options - such as optical drives, and air and heat-sink-based water cooling systems.
This concept is taken to extremes by the growing numbers of "gamers" in the market who are driving the components market to new highs on a monthly basis as they design and build PCs to meet their very specific requirements.
Moreover, gamers continuously "hop up" their PCs to be able to run the latest software and compete more successfully in gaming competitions.
Key considerations of all gaming PC buyers are upgradability and scalability, which are central to the marketing messages of local brand vendors.
Notebooks
The notebook market is one of the most competitive at the moment with many desktop PC sales being lost to notebooks which have fallen dramatically in price as multinational vendors look to expand their influence.
Despite a plethora of entry-level notebooks reaching the market from multinational vendors, local notebook brands are winning this contest as well, again motivated to a large extent by Intel`s support for system builders and its BTO "Whitebox" initiative.
Their support is helping local brands to entrench themselves in this market - which is growing at around 15% year-on-year.
This situation gives local vendors an opportunity to underline the advantages of their Intel-based machines when it comes to warranty claims - such as quick swap outs and the use of loan units when immediate repairs are not possible.
Perhaps it will give local dealers the chance to highlight the growing number of aftermarket "add-ons" for locally branded notebook PCs that will allow these machines to better compete with their international rivals when it comes to personal entertainment centres. Such as the incorporation of portable, digital music and video capture devices, which can be linked to the Internet or TV channels.
Servers
The server market is reacting to the marketing efforts of local vendors at a slower pace than the desktop and notebook sectors. But change is evident in line with the increasing likelihood of tenders from government and quasi-government organisations to specify "proudly South African" brands.
Post-sales service and support are equally critical in this sector as they are in the notebook market, as servers are often central to the effective running of mission-critical corporate networks.
Local warranties that stipulate guaranteed uptime for the customer are becoming the norm. But this is a game that multinationals know well, so the challenge has been defined for all the players.
What local vendors must deliver is a commercially viable, reliable, performance-oriented and future-proofed server that represents sound value for money - and is capable of delivering a return on investment in the long-term.
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