ASUS, the Chinese brand associated with mini notebooks in India, which along with Intel, launched its Eee Box, the eco-friendly desktop PC for the Indian market, on Wednesday has targeted sales of 15,000 units of the new desktop PC each quarter.
The Eee Box, priced at Rs 16, 490 (excluding taxes) is targeted mainly at the Indian small and medium enterprise and the home users segment.
?This is our new initiative for the Indian SME (small and medium enterprises) and the home-user segment. It?s small and compact, measuring only 1L in size, and consumes less than 90% power than normal PCs. We are hopeful about selling 15,000 units of Eee Box every quarter,? commented Benson Lin, corporate vice-president, ASUS.
Industry analysts, however, doubt whether ASUS can reach this figure. ?BPO players do buy these kinds of small desktop PCs, but in the current scenario where cost-cutting is prevalent everywhere, it?s unlikely that BPO companies will invest in buying these. The individual consumer market segment is, on the other hand, obviously not that huge,? said Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst, Gartner, India.
?Moreover, in India, ASUS is not popular as a desktop manufacturer. And there is also not much demand for small desktop PCs, thus it is quite unlikely that they will be able to sell 15,000 units each quarter,? he added
However, ASUS which is pretty popular for its Netbooks (mini laptops), have sold 6,750 units in the months from July-September. The company is planning to launch its touch screen Eee PC netbook early next year, and the company is also in talks with Indian telecom operators as they are planning to launch their Eee PC netbook version with 3.75G mobile broadband connectivity sometime this year.