By Editor
ASBIS is using its deep market intelligence and logistical strength to push its Prestigio brand, an emergent international mobile brand in its own right. VP for META region at ASBIS Hesham Tantawi, discusses the continued evolvement of this strategy
ASBIS, from all indications had a bumper 2014 as the Prestigio mobile brand continued to make headway. Discuss how you hope to take this momentum into 2015
Our strategy is to grow in mobility again this year as we did in 2014 and continue building our mobility initiative with our popular in-house brand Prestigio. Towards the end of 2014, we launched the Prestigio Grace, the slimmest smartphone in the market at the time incorporating an ultra-slim form factor without compromising quality and performance. That is in addition to our tablets and Windows smartphone range. We have been successful in the market for three years now with decent market share and hope to continue growing in the same arena.
We are also focused on our networking portfolio where we are again growing with our value team and we expect to grow again in 2015. The biggest focus is to continue growing on our components business and bring more components into the market.
The smartphone market in the region has been very dynamic, and fluid, especially in the last two years. What is behind Prestigio’s staying power?
During 2014, a lot of players entered the market; however by the end of the year a number of players exited the scene. This is because a lot of these brands had not made the investments to build the brand, bring stability into their operations and also bring to the market a healthy product line-this is the approach from the beginning with Prestigio to build a product that can hold its own and thrive in the market.
As the Notebook market slows down with the rise of smartphones and tablets, discuss how ASBIS has reacted to this development?
ASBIS ceased the distribution of notebooks in the UAE two years back and in Q4 of 2014, ASBIS closed its notebook distribution in KSA. With that, ASBIS is out of the notebook distribution business in the region. This is because we have seen that this segment is not getting us the worth and we of course seek value for our shareholders. In the future, we will concentrate on mobility, components and solutions.
Discuss the components business in the region and your key solutions in this segment
We continue to be the biggest component distributors in MENA, working with our partners such as AMD, Seagate, Hitachi and Toshiba Storage as well as many VGA vendors. All of these get us the value we require as we offer a complete proposition for the market. We see consolidation in this space and we are growing our business in this area as well.
In gaming, we distribute AMD products as well as being one of the biggest distributors for display cards in the region, which are at the heart of the gaming industry. This is a segment with great potential in the region and this is why we are still selling CPUs and VGA cards aimed at the gaming community and market.
A booming segment is Home Automation and smart homes. Is this an area of focus for ASBIS?
This is an area of great interest to us and this is why there’s now a division within Prestigio that specifically targets the Smart Home solutions introduced during GITEX. That said, many of the components we sell like chassis, storage etc. are the major building blocks for smart homes and home surveillance. So assemblers for PCs might be going out of the market but assemblers for DVRs are now having great traction.
What then will be the main driver for ASBIS growth in 2015?
We are focusing on three key pillars for our business-the values product, our own mobile brand as well as the component business. This is addressed by three different teams. The Prestigio team is focused on operating as a vendor with all the activities that are to be undertaken by a vendor. For the brand’s facilitation to go to market is where the logistics of ASBIS come in. Simply put, we are a Prestigio vendor but with the logistics of ASBIS. We are still distributors for the other products we sell.
Our Africa focus continues to develop as well. We have an international team focused on Africa for our brand Prestigio in addition to maintaining an ASBIS office in South Africa. Our centrally placed Dubai office serves the North African market as well.