With the declining assembled PC market, LG India plans to foray into several new product categories in 2014 to grow its IT business division.
In 2014, the company will foray into AIO PCs, network attached storage (NAS), external HDDs, and PC speakers.
“The assembled PC market declined from 40 lakh units in 2011 to 22 lakh units in 2013. This has definitely had a bearing on LG’s IT business of monitors and ODDs—our IT business consolidated from Rs 790 crore in 2010 to Rs 428 crore in 2013,” informed Sanjoy Bhattacharya, IT Head, LG India.
LG plans to enter the AIO PC market with SKUs ranging from 22-inch to 29-inch. Besides, it will launch Chrome-based AIOs in 22-inch variants and later on expand with 25-inch SKUs.
The company also plans to launch 2.0, 2.1 and 5.1 speakers for PCs and is aiming to sell almost 4 lakh speaker units in 2014.
In the storage space, LG sees strong opportunities in the network attached storage (NAS) and external HDD markets. “We already have NAS and HDD products in the global market. The plan is to expand this product portfolio to India,” informed Bhattacharya.
With the new product additions, the company is expecting to grow its IT business by 40 percent to Rs 600 crore in 2014.
The company aims to maintain its market leadership in the monitor market with focus on monitor TVs and large-screen displays. LG claims to have garnered 18 percent or 4.25 lakh units of the 24 lakh units unbundled-monitor market in India in 2013.
“We are aggressively focusing on the replacement market, which is huge. Last year this market contributed about 20 percent of our monitor revenue. This year we expect the contribution to more than double,” said Bhattacharya.
For monitor TVs, which accounted for nearly 20 percent of LG India monitor sales in 2013, the company is planning to tap a new channel, that of cable TV operators, to persuade TV-viewing consumers to opt for monitor TVs.
