President and Managing Director of Acer India Harish Kohli.
Credit: DH photo
Laptop-maker Acer is prepping to diversify its electronic consumer goods portfolio by the first quarter of 2025 despite tight competition in the targeted markets, the company’s India MD Harish Kohli told DH.
The company plans to open 300 plus stores by the end of calendar year 2024, focusing on tier-2 and tier-3 cities, given the rising demand from them. The brand, which moved beyond its personal computer niche in 2021-22, presently, has to its name, televisions, water and air purifiers, in the market. It is on the threshold of launching its smartphones.
Going forward, the company nurses ambitions of covering the entire spectrum of electronics goods, “We will cover most of the products by Q1CY2025. Let's say refrigerators are also fixed to be launched in the future. The confidence comes from the brand recall of Acer, also pumped by the growing income of the middle class,” added Kohli.
“The company’s sales comes 40 per cent from its exclusive stores and 50 per cent from multi-brand outlets in tier-2 and tier-3 cities,” said Sooraj Balakrishnan, Associate Director & Head of Marketing, Acer India.
The Taiwanese MNC has a 15.4 per cent market share in the electronic products segment, and holds the no.3 brand position in the personal-computer segment in India, as per the Q1 2024 report of market intelligence firm IDC. It has reported an annual growth of 19.9 per cent in desktop sales and 32 per cent in notebook sales during the first quarter of calendar year 2024.
“Our performance has been really good and we expect to do even better in the upcoming quarters. I am reasonably sure that we will move to number two position with an expected 2x growth in the consumer business,” said Acer’s India MD.
The IDC report also placed Acer at the top of the education segment, besides emerging as a leading desktop brand in the ‘very large enterprise’ segment. Additionally, Acer's consumer segment has seen a 51.7 per cent year-on-year increase driven by strong momentum in e-tail channels, the report highlighted.