Channel Post speaks to Senic Chiu, the Country Manager for Middle East and Africa at ASUS, to find out the company’s plans for the upcoming months, and the product and channel strategies in place
What sort of product plans does Asus have for the next couple of months?
The biggest launch recently were the Intel Z97 and H97 motherboards. We will have more and more remarkable and flagship models coming out pretty soon. Meanwhile, we also provide gamers and power users high-end graphic cards with a cooling system that’s been designed in-house. It will bring the users whole-new experience in PC gaming.
What plans does Asus have for Computex? What events will it conduct? Which products will it launch?
We will conduct a number of events: corporate press event, a separate Republic of Gamers press event, booth and HQ media tours, and some events for customers. As far as products are concerned, we are unable to disclose before the event.
However, we will have teaser videos on press.asus.com/events. The teaser will give you some good hints about the products we are about to launch. There will be some exciting new products shown at Computex 2014.
Do you see the components market growing in the Middle East?
The components market is growing steadily in the Middle East for some specific fields. Today, we find more and more gamers in the region – not only young generation, but also elders, and not only male, but also more and more female gamers.
Therefore, we are launching new gaming related products, such as mainstream gaming motherboard and graphic card, high quality audio card, and gaming headset and accessories. Nowadays, people are using more wireless devices, such as smart phones, tablets and so on. Home cloud concept is also getting popular and it’s another growing field in the components market.
We do not see the components market declining. In fact, it is shifting and adjusting to changes. For instance, there’s more focus on mATX motherboards versus standard sized motherboards. So components market will still manage to thrive, but perhaps in a different form to what we have seen until now.
Has the components market been impacted by increased uptake of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks and so on?
The components market has a different target audience and is targeted to “gaming enthusiasts” and DIY enthusiasts, who are focused on high quality products. They are also focused on excellent performance, which devices such as smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks, and so on, cannot yet deliver for gaming.
It is true that mobile gaming is growing and game developers are very busy making new mobile applications and games. That said, a purpose-built PC still delivers a very different and far more superior experience and hence you cannot compare the performance of mobile devices with IT components.
What are your channel strategies for Middle East and Africa region?
We can simply separate Middle East and Africa, since it’s still quite different. The Middle East is a very diversified region – it is quite different in terms of population, GDP, politics, country status, end user preference, and so on.
Instead of considering the Middle East region as one, we’d prefer local approach from country to country, to recognise the difference between them. Africa meanwhile is very big and a potential market for us. But the risk is there higher, too.
Even though everyone still tries to expand as much as they can in Africa nowadays, we will wait and seek market opportunity based on the demand of IT components. We have local partners to assist with our business and it’s very important to have success in Africa. We expect to cooperate with more partners in Africa, to create the win-win business for each other.
What do you think of the gaming community in the MEA region? Is it as big as those in other regions such as Asia and Europe?
The gaming community is not as big as in other regions, but there is a big potential for it to grow. We have seen many developments in MEA eSports events, in the past couple of years, and it is growing really fast. The largest gaming events in the region now have over 4000 players and the commitment from ASUS is also increasing to be part of this trend.
Also, the gaming community here is getting more and more international attention. Some of the best teams in the world have started visiting this region for events and this will also create more enthusiasm. From our side, we want to be actively involved in the development of the regional gaming community and support them as much as possible.
