Dell's Rebooted Asian Strategy

Dell's Rebooted Asian Strategy

The computer maker can't expect instant results from its decision to sell its products in retail stores

Earlier this month, the company broke a 23-year tradition when it unveiled plans to sell its products at retail outfits across the Asia-Pacific region. The announcement is significant for a company that had long marketed itself as the golden child of a direct sales model.

According to analysts ZDNet Asia spoke to, it was a move that was inevitable particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where consumers like to physically handle a product before they buy it.

Bryan Ma, IDC's Asia-Pacific director of personal systems research, described the move as "necessary" because Dell was often criticized for pushing its direct model in a region where consumers prefer to "feel and touch" their products and pay in cash.

"[The direct model] worked very well for them in the past because the bulk of their business has been in the enterprise and public sectors," Ma explained. However, Dell has had limited success in the Asia-Pacific consumer market, where its lack of physical retail presence was a disadvantage particularly against competitors such as Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Acer.

Diptarup Chakraborti, Gartner India's principal analyst of Asia-Pacific client computing markets, said Dell has been facing some resistance from users who do not buy or make advance payments for expensive products such as a notebook, without first seeing the product. Chakraborti noted that this has compelled Dell to change its strategy and enter the retail space.

In addition, Ma noted that a lot of growth in the last few years had centered on the consumer market, with Acer and HP gaining a fair bit of market from their notebook shipments. "That's where Dell has been left out of the game, so this decision is a good step forward," he said.

Chakraborti added that the PC maker has been "toying" with the possibility of going indirect for a long time, and the wakeup call came...