By Nandagopal Rajan
If the indicators at the South West Asia edition of the annual Samsung Forum in Bali were anything to go by, the tech giant from South Korea now has serious plans for the enterprise space.
The company, which has the largest smartphone market share in India, seems to be winding up for the enterprise adoption of tablets and most importantly Google’s Android operating system.
Its biggest announcement for India was arguably the Samsung Galaxy NotePRO, a 12.2-inch tablet clearly aimed at the enterprise segment because of its productivity-centric features. It is also expensive, meaning it will keep away other buyers.
Country head Vineet Taneja estimated that serious buyers, who need the productivity, would be at least 100,000. For a tablet that costs R64,900, that would be a good number to start with.
Interestingly, this new tablet will also support Knox, Samsung’s enterprise solution for top-end Android devices. But Knox has been there for at least a year, and enterprise business head Sameer Garde told FE that customers are showing interest because many employees were bringing it in their own devices.
“Since most of these are Android devices, CIOs are trying to find out how to make it safer,” he said, explaining the importance of Knox for IT departments of companies.
Taneja said the recent spectrum auctions have given the company confidence that 3G will become robust and LTE will continue to expand. “2014 will be a good year for the mobile market,” he added.
BD Park, Samsung Electronics’ president and CEO for South West Asia, said the company will focus on bringing in smarter experiences for its customers, of which there are more and more every year. No wonder then that the company has recently been touted as the eighth most valuable in the world.
The company also showed its intent to capture more space in the camera segment. It announced a new NX30 mirrorless camera along with the Galaxy Camera 2, the second version of its innovative connected camera. The prices of these devices will be announced closer to the launch, Taneja said.
The other main announcements were a 5-inch Galaxy Grand Neo. At R18,450, a seven-inch Tab3 Neo priced at R16,490 and a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Neo with updated features and access to local Club Samsung content. This 5.5-inch phablet is priced at R40,900. The Neo series seems like a new range of minor updates to popular devices across segments. The company also announced new Curved UDH TVs in 78, 65 and 55 inch sizes for India.
