Channel Post spoke to Arthur Liu, the Deputy Manager for the Middle East Sales Division at GIGABYTE, about the company’s product road map and channel strategies for the months ahead
Which products are you showcasing at Computex this year?
This year, we have launched many new products based on Intel’s 9 series chipset. In order to stand out of the crowd, we have created three new product lines for this new chipset such as Ultra Durable, G1 Gaming Series, and Overclocking Series.
We are developing products according to these three different line of products. In the graphics card range of products, there hasn’t been any introduction of new chipsets. However, in the mini PC arena, we have launched the BRIX series, which has products targeted for home, business and industrial usage.
So we have some products that are meant for home users that comes with multimedia features, some products for business users, and some for industrial uses such as digital signage , video walls and so on.
How important is Middle East for GIGABYTE?
Every region we are present is, is equally important for us. Having said that, our goal right now is to be the industry leader in the product areas we represent. Middle East is one of our most important markets globally. This is because Middle East is big enough in terms of population and demand.
I am proud to say that GIGABYTE has been the top motherboards and graphics cards brand in Middle East for more than 10 years. That says a lot about our products and our commitment to the Middle East region.
How big is the gaming and overclocking community in the Middle East?
While gaming has moved on to other platforms such as consoles and mobile devices, we have seen that hardcore gamers still prefer PCs for their gaming requirements. We have also seen that there are many gaming communities that revolve around PCs as a hardware choice.
These gaming communities frequently conduct contests, tournaments, meetups and so on and we encourage such gamers by working directly with them. We have also signed up with NVIDIA to conduct gaming events and roadshows in the Middle East. You will soon hear announcements related to such events soon.
As for overclocking, it will still take time for it to grow in the Middle East.
Tell us about your channel community in the Middle East.
We have many in-country and in-region distributors in the Middle East. For instance, the region you are from – UAE and related countries – we have Golden Systems as our distributor.
For countries such as KSA, Egypt, Algeria and so on, we have separate distributors. For KSA for instance, we work with PC Time. We are also looking for distributors from time to time for areas that we are not present in currently.
Most of the new products we have on showcase here, are already commercially available through our distributors in the Middle East region. Only BRIX, which is a specialty product, before we send out products to our distributors.
