• 
• 

Published on November 21, 2007

The move followed Samsung's worldwide policy of focusing on digital products to satisfy new lifestyle trends.

The company hopes to achieve Bt330 million in digital revenue this year, including Bt250 million from sales of 60,000 digital media players and the rest from flash-memory camcorders.

Formerly, all digital devices were handled by audio-visual staff who were also responsible for other consumer products, such as LCD television sets.

The company hired 50 people to handle sales and marketing for the new unit and widened distribution channels from retailers and photo shops to information-technology (IT) stores, Pornpimon Sawatphadungkij, manager for digital products, said yesterday.

The company is also allocating a separate marketing budget for digital devices, starting with Bt20 million for this quarter. About 65 per cent will be spent on media advertising and the rest to activities. The target customer group is people aged 15-35 who are premium-oriented, active mobile-phone users and design seekers.

Pornpimon said consumers had changed from using cassette tapes to DVDs to portable media players for collecting photos and entertaining themselves. The digital-media-player market has already grown 50 per cent in the past three quarters, while the camcorder market has expanded 30 per cent.

Samsung will exploit its extensive presence in the modern trade channel but has not penetrated IT shops yet.

The company will see a total of 20 product launchings this year, half for MP3 and MP4 digital media players and half for camcorders. Six were held yesterday.

Samsung ranks fourth with a 9-per-cent share of the 400,000-unit domestic digital-media-player market and 10 per cent of the 80,000-unit camcorder market. It wants to improve its market share to 16 per cent for digital media players and 20 per cent for camcorders.

Nitida Asawanipont, The Nation