3Com eyes bigger Asian retail success
SINGAPORE--Networking giant 3Com plans to take its Asian retail business success a step further.
Speaking to reporters at a media forum Wednesday, Peter Chai, vice president and general manager of 3Com Asia-Pacific, said that the company's retail channel strategy, which includes distributors, sub-distributors and resellers, has been successful in South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Chai claimed that 3Com holds 40 percent share of the South Korean retail market, adding that the network gear maker has been "quite successful in Thailand, Malaysia and to an extent, Indonesia--which is picking up very fast."
"So selectively, we are going to grow our retail volume business in those four countries especially," Chai said, adding that 3Com will "focus on growing the retail market, where there is an IT mall".
He said it does not matter how much revenue 3Com generates from the retail market, as it "gives us a lot of leverage in terms of branding awareness and branding value".
On whether 3Com plans to replicate this success in other markets in the region, Chai said: "We will look at countries where there are IT malls, [and] I think it's important to have the right product mix as well as the right marketing and branding program to go with it."
We are one
3Com also unveiled Wednesday a unified sales and support organization for the Asia-Pacific region, following the integration of H3C into 3Com which was finalized in March this year. 3Com acquired the remaining 49 percent of H3C Technologies, a joint venture with Chinese equipment maker Huawei Technologies.
In-region sales, marketing as well as global services and support will be combined to deliver integrated solutions to its customer, partners and distributors, the company said.
"With this successful integration, we have built a stronger, more experienced team that we believe will enable us to increase our presence and success in the region," Chai said. "By combining the two organizations, our customers and partners now have access to a more expansive portfolio of low-cost, high-quality, secure converged networking solutions."
3Com also intends to fully leverage H3C's research and development capabilities "to help us create new, innovative products and deliver them to the enterprise and service provider markets faster than the competition", Chai added. "I am very confident that we now have a team in place that will help us win in both the large enterprise and SMB markets."
H3C Technologies will also help 3Com expand its business in the large enterprise space. Chai noted that while 3Com's strength is in the medium-sized enterprise space, H3C's strength lies in the large enterprise verticals.
"Within China, [H3C] addresses the entire market, [but] outside of China, H3C has always been very much focused on the large enterprise, so of course we want to take advantage of that," he said.
"Before the integration, the 3Com side [of the business] focused on large enterprises, but mainly in education and government," Chai said. "Now, with the addition of H3C, it'll be extended to other verticals like banking and insurance, military government projects, and manufacturing."