Dubai: Toshiba is not keen on relaunching smartphones again and will focus only on computes and tablets, a top official told Gulf News.
Many vendors are moving to the PC plus era — computers, laptops, smartphones and televisions — as connectivity among devices is gaining traction.
“There is no point in leaving our core sectors and [running] after the smartphone segment, which we have left before,” said Santosh Varghese, regional general manager of computer systems division at Toshiba Gulf.
Currently Toshiba has a market share of 14 per cent in the Gulf.
“We lost around four percentage points of market share in the last two quarters. Bigger markets like the UAE and Saudi Arabia have shrunk amid falling prices. We don’t want to be in the price game and will focus only on quality products,” he said.
He said Gitex is always better than the previous year. If the trend continues “we expect our sales to rise 20 per cent [from] last year”.
“We (Toshiba) are seeing no demand on tablets as every retailer is bundling cheap tablets with offers for free. Demand is still on in the mid-range touch notebooks and detachables,” he said.
He said the UAE market has become highly seasonal. Starting with Gitex in October, then the Dubai Shopping Festival, Gitex Spring in April, a little bit on Dubai Summer Surprises and then the market is flat.
These are the events where vendors and retailers try to maximise their business. It is difficult to predict growth. “If you have a good event like this, then growth happens. Gone are the days where customers look for new technology. The replacement cycle is not happening now and this happens only when promotions like these happen, otherwise consumers stick to their old devices,” Varghese said.
“We have been not in the tablet game for the last couple of years. We were trying to differentiate the tablet technology. We have it in some markets and it is doing well. We have decided to enter into the low-priced tablet segment, which starts from Dh549.”
Toshiba launched two seven-inch Android tablets for Dh549 and Dh599 respectively. More than 65 per cent of the demand is coming from the seven-inch tablets.
This is the project “we are looking at for the next one year. Toshiba and many PC vendors will be very aggressive in this price segment. What will happen is that many unknown brands will be wiped out of the market as they cannot withstand the competition and cannot sustain,” he said.
He said customers are looking for reliability, better technology and quality products even for that price range. So if the branded vendors come out with low-cost tablets they can leverage it out and take complete share from the unbranded vendors.
“We are coming out with Windows tablets during the holiday season. We will be launching around eight tablets this year,” Varghese said.
