HP TO EXPAND BIZ IN INDIA

Vinod Mishra, Hong Kong, September 29, 2008
The Times of India

Hewlett-Packard, world's largest technology company, will be expanding its retail business in India to further strengthen its consumer leadership. HP will roll out 7,500 new stores in 1,000 cities and experience stores across Asia Pacific region.

With these new stores, HP will broaden its consumer reach to 25,000 retail partner stores in the region by 2010. "We have a massive plan and a large number of new stores will be based in India," Christopher Morgan, senior vice-president, Imaging and Printing Group (IPG), HP Asia Pacific and Japan, said. Besides big cities, HP will focus on increasing its retail presence in non-metropolitan cities like Jaipur, Morgan said while addressing the two-day HP Asia Pacific regional press event in Hong Kong on September 16.

This will help consumers of non-metropolitan cities to enjoy access to retail partner stores merchandising HP's full range of consumer offerings. In addition, HP is driving deeper engagement with key consumer segments with new alternate experience centres.

"Consumers today value personalised experiences. These centres will further complement and strengthen HP's growing retail footprint," said See Chin Teik, senior V-P, personal systems group (PSG), HP Asia Pacific and Japan. These centres will reach out to consumers for an intuitive, enjoyable and convenient shopping experience particularly for women, youth and families.

It will introduce a special edition notebook PC in collaboration with world-renowned fashion designer Vivienne Tam early 2009 to take care of women's interests in fashion. To cater to the need of youth, it will come up with world's first EA experience store in Hong Kong with a wide range of HP desktops and notebooks. These are installed with game specific, desktop icons and skins contributing to enhanced experience for gamers. To attract families, the HP has tied up with Indian retail group Future Group to set up photo centres that will inspire them to do more with their digital photos. The centres would provide users access to an easy-to-use, safe and convenient photo printing experience.

The company also introduced a comprehensive range of scalable products and solutions for businesses designed to help drive an enhanced customer experience at retail. The new offerings include HP rp300 Point of Sale solution that can easily integrate into any retail's IT environment.