eMachine Brand Grew 100 Percent In 2010

Acer’s eMachine brand targeted at the price-conscious consumer segment has witnessed a 100 percent YoY growth in 2010. It recorded average sales of 8,000 units per month during 2010, compared to an average of 4,000 units per month in 2009.

Commenting on the growth of the eMachine brand, S Rajendran, CMO, Acer India said, “The multi-brand strategy has worked quite well for us. The eMachine sales figures show that we have gone beyond our expectation and delivered more than the targeted figure. We hit an average of close to 8,000 units of eMachine notebooks and netbooks per month, while on the desktop front; we achieved an average monthly sale of 2,000 units.”

Rajendran said that the reasons for eMachine doing well are its focused distribution strategy and competitive pricing. “Exclusively distributing eMachine mobile PCs through Supertron have worked well. At its price point it’s been doing really well in the hinterlands. Also we floated several exciting schemes around the year which pushed up the sales.”

Highlighting the type of customer promotions Acer has been doing around eMachine, Rajendran said, “We currently have a scheme running in partnership with MTS in Rajasthan and Delhi. The eMachine model with N450 Atom with 1GB memory, 250GB hard drives and pre-bundled with a Windows 7 Starter edition is available for an MRP of Rs 12,999. Customers buying this with MTS broadband modem get Rs 2,000 cash back thus making the customer pricing at Rs 10,999. Schemes around eMachine have been local and target varying consumer demographics in different geographies.”

Acer expects the momentum to continue in 2011 as well. “eMachine will continue to be our focus in 2011 and we expect to sell more than 12,000 units per month in the year. Our strategy will be to further penetrate the upcountry market,” he claimed.

Rajendran said Acer isn’t averse to tapping the telco channel for eMachine to achieve its goal of doubling the market coverage. “We will continue with the same distribution model—Supertron will be exclusive for notebooks and netbooks while Salora, Ingram and Redington will distribute desktops. But we expect our distributors to tap the mobile channel,” he averred.

Rajendran said Acer will continue to have a limited product portfolio for eMachine mobile PCs. “Presently we have one model based on Intel Atom, two models on Pentium Dual Core and one model on Core i3. We don’t want to expand this portfolio. We want to keep things simple for our distributors and partners,” he informed.