Samart looks to flout economic doom and gloom

Company president Watchai Vilailuck said Samart would continue expanding its business and had no plans to cut staff.

He added that Samart was eager to secure a deal from TOT's plan to roll out a 3G mobile broadband network across the country at a cost of Bt29 billion. It also eyes TOT's plan to install one million ports of the broadband Internet network. The project is worth Bt700 million.

In addition, Samart hopes to win the deal to install a submarine cable worth Bt4 billion from a private oil firm.

Watchai believes that the state telecom and IT agencies will spend huge amounts this year, which will boost the economy.

Among Samart's businesses are Samart Telcoms (Samtel), which bids for state telecom and IT projects, and the regional mobile-content and mobile-phone distributor Samart I-Mobile (SIM).

Watchai said Samtel targeted gaining revenue of Bt8 billion from state projects worth totally Bt50 billion this year. Last year it gained only Bt3 billion from state projects worth Bt10 billion.

SIM is expected to post revenue of around Bt12.5 billion this year, he added.

Samtel is expected to contribute 31 per cent to the group's total revenue, while SIM this year is expected to generate 55 per cent to the group, he said.

SIM revenue usually accounts for 70 per cent of the group's consolidated revenue but this year is expected to decline, due to the fierce competition from cheap handsets from China, coupled with the slowing economy.

Besides the global brand-name handsets, SIM sells its in-house I-Mobile brand handsets, featuring hi-tech functions in an affordable price range.

Watchai said SIM was expected to sell 5 million I-mobile handsets this year, 54 per cent or 2.7 million units to the local market and 2.3 million to the rest of the region, 20 per cent of the latter to Indonesia.

Watchai said SIM planned to set up an I-Mobile retail shop in Dubai.

He forecast that total handset sales in Thailand this year would be around 8 million, the same as last year.

Last year SIM sold 2.5 million I-Mobile handsets in Thailand and 1.1 million in the rest of the region, missing its sales target of 5 million.