Dubai: HP Inc aims to strengthen its product portfolio in a bid to cement its position as the world’s largest PC and printer manufacturer.
HP regained its top PC selling position this year, which they had previously lost to Lenovo in the third quarter of 2012.
Narayanan Venkataraman, head of personal computing HP Middle East and Saudi Arabia, told Gulf News the company says opportunity in that the fact that there are 500,000 personal computers globally, which are more than four years old, which can be replaced with newer models.
He said the PC market is starting to stabilise after hitting bottom in 2016. From now on, the market may stay at current levels or see a marginal “single-digit” increase. The marginal growth is expected to come from some consumers replacing older computers — due to the new processors that are going to drive purchases of enterprise customers.
Security, a big concern, will also drive consumers to update their computers to take advantage of new capabilities available on PCs today.
According to HP, the average market size of the UAE is around 1.2 million units per year and the commercial sector contributes around 40 per cent.
When asked about Gitex sales, he said: “Last October, we saw 116,000 PCs sold totally by all brands in the UAE and we expect a flattish sale this year.”
Gaining prominence
Among the PC category, he said that convertible PCs, gaming laptops and ultrabooks are a growing category.
“Gaming is part of our growth strategy and it is gaining prominence. It is not a big category now but the year-on-year growth rate is much faster than the usual laptops. Gaming segment is expected to grow 21 per cent annual rate globally, and I don’t think our region is quite different from that,” Venkataraman said.
Peter Ogandesean, regional manager for UAE, Iraq and East Africa at HP, said that the company registered 13 per cent year on year and 21 per cent year-on-year growth in the third-quarter fiscal year from the Middle East.
According to research firm IDC, HP has a 22 per cent market share in the second quarter in the PC space and 64 per cent market share in the printing pace and is ranked number one in both the categories.
Ogandesean claims that HP has a 50 per cent market share in the commercial premium notebooks with 28 per cent year-on-year growth.
