Samsung brings notebook line to the country
Valor Econômico
The dispute for the Brazilian market of notebooks, which already has countless competitors, receives another heavy weight player today: Korean Samsung. The company will join a list of manufacturers that promise to fight vigorously for the preference of the consumer this Christmas and that includes brands such as Positivo, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Apple, Lenovo, LG, MSI, Acer, Megaware and Itautec.
After two years studying the Brazilian market, Samsung intends to place five machines at prices that range from R$ 1.5 thousand (US$ 872) and R$ 3.6 thousand (US$ 2.1 thousand) on the shelves of the retailers next week.
The computer market in Brazil has been showing good performance in 2009, mainly in relation to other countries. The sales were weak in the first quarter, but they improved between April and June and continued recovering in the period from July to September, achieving a total of 7.9 million machines sold in the year in nine months, according to the data of the consulting firm IT Data. In the last quarter, the estimate is that 3.34 million computers should be sold.
The first batch of Samsung portables, with nearly 20 thousand units, will be imported from Korea and distributed mainly in the South and Southeast regions of the country. According to Ronaldo Miranda, Officer of Information Technology Products (IT) of Samsung, the decision of importing the machines was taken so that the equipment could be available in time for Christmas. The importing, however, shall be replaced by equipment made in Brazil.
The notebooks will be produced in the unit of Campinas, in the interior of São Paulo, where Samsung already manufactures monitors and cellular phones. The plan is to start the operations in February, with the first national products landing in the stores in March. The unit of portables in Brazil will be the only one of the company outside China. In the first phase, the Brazilian production will be fully aimed at the local market. He does not disclose the figures of the investment or the productive capacity of the unit. Miranda says, however, that Samsung intends to place itself among the ten biggest sellers of notebooks of the country already in 2010. The entrance in the market of desktop computers has been discarded.