WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.
Intel is preparing the biggest channel promotion drive to push the Ultrabook concept.
The vendor revealed at its Intel Platinum Summit, currently underway in London that it will invest heavily in R&D, manufacturing of innovative products and channel marketing.
Along with its OEM vendor partners Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer and Novatech, Intel has prepared a multi-language print, television and web advertising, social media and support package to challenge the tablet business. It intends the channel to be a major player.
Intel vice president for Sales and Marketing Group, Steven Dallman, said that in a year's time, the Ultrabook will be everywhere.
Dallman said the company expects the form factor to appeal strongly in emerging regions. "Intel has had exceptional growth in the EMEA region particularly in emerging markets in the last year, largely due to the efforts of our channel partners," he said.
With EMEA now the top market for Intel's channel and having repaid investment in recent by lifting sales in a number of technology areas, the chip-maker knows it has to create a bit of a storm to drive the Ultrabook campaign in each country.
Gregory Pearson, vice president, Sales and Marketing Group & general manager, Worldwide Sales Operations Group at Intel, added that Intel wants to be the partner that resellers want to do business with.
"As we are redefining the PC with Ultrabooks, it's vital that our channel partners are involved in everything we do," he said. "We want to transition more users to the Ultrabook platform and we can only achieve this if we involve our channel partners."
Pearson said Intel's motivation in embarking on the global Ultrabook campaign is to help channel partners to differentiate themselves in the market by adding solutions to the products they sell, not just pure play systems integration.
"We want our channel partners through the Intel Technology Provider (ITP) initiative to be a major player in this," he added.
According to Pearson, the Ultrabook campaign also aims to help local system builders and integrators to work closely with Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) in bringing to market local branded Ultrabooks.
"We are encouraging a lot of our resellers that want to build their local branded solutions," he said.
Pearson pointed out that the campaign will also assist channel partner with in-country demand generation activities.
"We want to take this Ultrabook drive to the world in a ‘big' way. At the end of the day, this is about learning, sharing and challenging the established order in the market with compelling products and solutions," he said.
