Samsung expects 82% growth

Samsung Electronics Philippines is expecting sales to grow 82 percent this year as it introduces new models for printers, monitors and components.

Jino Carlo N. Alvarez, general manager of Samsung’s IT team said they are confident that the IT section of Samsung will contribute more to the company’s bottomline.

For 2007, Samsung’s IT operations contributed $38 million or 15 percent of the entire sales. For this year, Alvarez said their aim is to increase this number by five percentage points to 20 percent of total sales.

“We would like to contribute more this year that is why we will be more aggressive. This first half, we will be introducing new models especially for printers,” Alvarez explained further.

According to him, their strategy is to eat more of the market share of their competitors. Samsung’s closest competitor for printers is Brother.

However, Alvarez said they will not go into a price war with the other brands. Instead, he said Samsung will invest more in their research and development (R&D) in order to develop products attuned to the needs of the consumers.

“Printers are the strategic growth focus of Samsung,” Alvarez said.

In order to attain this, he said they will focus more on corporate clients. “Schools, the BPOs (business process outsourcing) and other business will be our main clients,” he noted.

Samsung printers range from the affordable ones that are for personal use to the high-end products for corporate clients.

For printers, Samsung expects to grow by a strong 114 percent this year. Last year the printer sales accounted for eight percent of the firm’s total IT sales.

Alvarez said their target is to increase printer’s share to total sale of 10 to 12 percent share.

For his part, Bong Wan Kim, Samsung IT vice president said they would like to offer a wide range of products to small and medium businesses as well as large multi- national companies.

“Samsung is dedicated in providing premium IT experiences through its many quality products,” he said.