Samsung to stick to 3-year warranty on HDDs - Cyber News Service

It has been over three months since all the hard disk drive (HDD)

manufacturers across the globe reduced the warranty period from three years

to one year. Though this decision was accepted with a pinch of salt, all of

them stood through this decision except Samsung. Samsung, after looking at

the market trend has planned to keep up its promise of three-year warranty

on its HDDs.

"It does make a small dent on our profits, but am sure this step should

fortify our presence in the market. We have been able to capture a growing

PC storage market through our innovative service offerings and will continue

to do so," says MS Bhalla, CPM (HDD), Samsung Electronics Information and

Telecom (SEIIT). He foresees the demand of the HDDs catapulting after this

move.

Somesh Narang, Director, Elcom Trading was affirmative with Bhalla's

comments. "End consumer was anyway going in for Samsung HDDs, but with this

move the dealers' channel will also strengthen," he says.

Sanjay Maheshwari, Director, Urvashi Computers, a local assembler in the

market, says that technically Samsung is not as strong as other HDDs in the

market but felt that their service offerings and the marketing policies has

made it a big hit with the end consumers.

Gurjeet Singh, Head (Marketing), OA Compserve felt that it is a win-win

opportunity for both the end-consumer and the channel partners and for SEIIT

too. "Samsung's HDD market share can be attributed to the service policies

and the push strategy and this new announcement will further strengthen the

market share," he says.

Bhalla added that SEIIT is now making inroads in The South Asian Association

for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries too with opening service centers

in Bangladesh and also plans to get aggressive with the OEMs.

CYBER NEWS SERVICE