Samsung launches upgradation offers

Samsung India Electronics Limited today launched two upgradation offers for products in computer peripherals "� colour monitors and high potential laser printers.

The two offers, Samsung Turbo Upgrade and Samsung Smart Xchange, seek to incentivise consumers to upgrade their existing computer components by giving them a strong value proposition.

Announcing the offers, Vivek Prakash, vice-president (IT product sales), Samsung India, said: "With these offers we expect consumers to convert their personal computers to a multimedia power house. This will not only spur industry growth but also help consumers appreciate and enjoy the benefits of the changing technology."

Prakash said that there are about five million users in the country who have computers which are more than three-year-old, out of which about three million are institutional users and the rest domestic.

"These offers are mainly for domestic users. We expect about 60,000 to 80,000 customers to upgrade their systems," Prakash said.

The Samsung Turbo Upgrade offer is available in two packages. In the first package, consumers can upgrade their old 15-inch monitor, CDROM and 10/20 Gb hard disc drive to a 17-inch Samsung bright PC monitor, a CDROM and an 80 Gb/7,200 RPM hard disc for Rs 11,999.

Under the second package customers can upgrade the system to a 17-inch monitor, a CDROM and an 80 Gb/7,200 RPM hard disc for Rs 9,499.

The second offer is the Samsung Smart Xchange offer, which is for laser printers. As part of this offer, consumers can exchange their old inkjet, dot matrix or laser printers for Samsung laser printers, at a discount of up to Rs 3,500. The offers are open from May 5 to June 15, 2004.

"We will have 1,000 trained assemblers in 24 cities across the country. And about 40 will be based in Andhra Pradesh, to help in these offers," Sonal Anand, deputy general manager (IT product sales), Samsung India, said.

Samsung India has a market share in excess of 50 per cent across the categories of components like monitors, hard disk drives and optical disk drives. The company also plans to launch MP3 players and digital cameras shortly.