Samsung eyes 22% pie of air-conditioner market

Digital technology player, Samsung India Electronics Private Limited, is aiming at capturing a bigger slice of the air-conditioner (ACs) market in the country, which is expected to touch 2.25 million units in 2008, from 1.8 million units last year.

The company is targeting to corner a 22 per cent share of the AC market in India this year, from 16.5 per cent last year, besides looking at expanding the sales network for its home appliances business by over 70 per cent, R Zutshi, deputy managing director of Samsung India, said here on Tuesday.

"We have set a target to sell 500,000 air-conditioners during 2008, as against 300,000 units last year, a volume growth of 66 per cent. This apart, we would be expanding our brand shop network "� Samsung Plazas "� to 200 this year, from 115 last year, across the country including tier II and tier III cities," he said, adding that the company was looking at tapping new large format retail opportunities like Croma, Reliance Retail and Aditya Birla.

Samsung today launched its 2008 range of biosleep air-conditioners, 10 in the split category and 5 in the window category, taking its total tally to 18 and 11 models respectively.

"The launch of the new range, coupled with our enhanced channel penetration should help us achieve our targeted 66 per cent growth in AC volumes this year. We expect our split AC volumes to grow from around 50 per cent contribution level witnessed last year, to around 58 per cent of our total AC volumes this year," Zutshi said.

The company expects to achieve a 110 per cent growth in its AC business in Andhra Pradesh this year, he added.

Thus far, Samsung India has invested around $180 million in the country, including in its refrigerators manufacturing plant at Noida and LCD plant at Chennai. The company plans to ramp up the production capacity at its Noida plant to 1.4 million units this year, from the present 0.8 million.

"Driven by our home appliances business, which witnessed a 28 per cent growth last year, and a two-fold growth in our LCD business, we expect our turnover to grow 30 per cent this year, from $1.3 billion last year," he said.