Samsung Electronics Co. is known particularly well for its smartphones, tablets and televisions.
Raymond Wah, an executive at the company‘s computer division, wants to add PCs to that list. The former Hewlett-Packard Co. executive said Samsung plans to amp up its efforts in the U.S., where it still lags major competitors such as H-P Dell Inc Lenovo Group Ltd. and Apple Inc. in market share.
“Given that now we have market leadership in the smartphone space, you will see a lot more exciting new go-to-market strategies from us,“ he said during an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show here. He declined to describe any of those efforts in detail, saying that some strategy was still being fleshed out after a recent internal reorganization that brought the PC division together with the company‘s mobile division.
But, he said, Samsung has determined that it wants to grow its share of the PC market. “We will put a lot more energy toward it,“ he said. “We want to be aggressive.“
Samsung made a splash in the U.S. with its Series 9 computer a couple years ago. It was well regarded among technology experts and reviewers for their sleek design and good quality hardware. But despite dramatic growth over the past year, Samsung says, it still remains just out of reach of the top five vendors in the U.S.
Mr. Wah expects growth in the coming year to come from as a result of a variety of market forces, such as struggles among other PC makers to maintain sales and the rapid rise of Samsung‘s mobile device products to become the most popular in the world.
More importantly, Mr. Wah said the proliferation of Samsung tablets, smartphones and televisions allows the company to intertwine its technology in a way that few others have accomplished.
“There‘s clearly an opportunity to improve the experience across all three screens,“ he said. “Samsung is in the best position with our technology advantage, our focus on design and quality, to bridge and stitch them all together.“
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(Published January 9, 2013, on The Wall Street Journal website.)