AMD eyes bigger mkt pie in India

Rachana Khanzode, Mumbai
The Financial Express
Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is scouting for a bigger share in the Indian market. Facing challenges from the leader of global chipmaker, Intel, in the domestic market too. AMD is working on a renewed market strategy, focusing on ramping up its product R&D, working aggressively with major OEMs like HP and Acer, and targeting local government tenders.

According to a global research firm, AMD has an overall market share of 14%. It enjoys a 19% market share in desktops and 4% in notebooks. Intel continues to enjoy the lion’s share of 86% of the overall market share with 81% in desktops and 96% in notebooks.

According to Gartner, India had witnessed a shipment of 9.2 million units at the end of December 2008 and similar shipments are expected this year. Ramkumar Subramanian, vice-president, sales & marketing, India and SAARC, AMD, said: “We continue to invest in our R&D and are also scouting for local government contracts. We have come up with some new programmes with system integrators and regional distributors.” The firm is now providing some incentives to the re-seller community for pushing the AMD products.

According to AMD, it has been facing challenges in various markets including India as a result of Intel’s monopoly. The firm had filed an anti-trust complaint against Intel Corporation way back in 2005 claiming damages. The case is still pending with the US federal district court of Delaware.

Currently, Intel and AMD have their product lines across HP, Dell, HCL and Acer. Intel is also present with Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony and Apple. Analysts point out that besides lack of large product lines, AMD has been largely behind of Intel owing to lack of marketing and advertising initiatives. Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst, Gartner, said: “AMD needs to create interest and awareness about its products among consumers and therefore it needs to invest into branding activities.”