Dell Technologies confident of driving AI PC growth in APAC

According to Ravi Bharadwaj, Vice President, Partner Ecosystem for Asia Pacific Japan & Greater China (APJC), the PC business remains a critical line of business for the vendor.

Dell Technologies continues to focus on meeting the demand of AI PCs in the region, especially with Windows 10 end of life fast approaching. While the competition remains between the three major PC makers globally, Dell Technologies believes it has the opportunity to get more devices to customers in the region.

In the US, Dell Technologies’ Jeff Clarke is focused on gaining share in PCs and has fired his first shot at doing so with two Dell Pro Essential models priced as low as US$300. This is a new price band for Dell as it seeks to capture spending from an entry-level commercial market estimated at 6 million devices.

During the second quarter, Dell’s Client Solutions Group, which includes its PC business, grew 1 percent year over year to US$12.5 billion. On the commercial side, sales were up 2 percent to US$10.8 billion, but consumer sales dipped 7 percent year over year to US$1.7 billion.

In IDC’s most recent report on the top five PC makers globally, Dell, which was in the number three spot, is the only company that lost share in global shipments amid a refresh of devices that has lifted both Lenovo and HP.

Fuelling growth in APAC

According to Ravi Bharadwaj, Vice President, Partner Ecosystem for Asia Pacific Japan & Greater China (APJC), the PC business remains a critical line of business for the vendor. Bharadwaj, who took over the role from Manish Gupta in June this year, believes his experience in working with the channel and the global alliances side, will enable him to take a better approach to the market as one partner ecosystem.

“With the whole one partner ecosystem, we are able to approach this in a much better way. There is the end customer where the whole conversation is now focused AI. Whether it is PC on the ISG segment or the CSG segment. And none of them want to be left behind. So, AI is becoming more of an enabler than just a conversation. A lot of questions and specifically on workloads and the usage of how a PC or AI enabled PC comes into play. And at this point of time, it's also a combination of an education, opportunity and demand generation,” Bharadwaj said.

For Bharadwaj, partners play an important role in enabling the faster adoption of AI PCs, especially with every conversation which the customer is having with Dell’s partners are all on AI. Hence, enabling partners to approach, to collaborate and more importantly be able to go to the next level of simplification of the ordering process and the tools is imperative for Dell.

“Partners are looking at how they can get to a level where it becomes more service and solution driven. Last year, we had 50% of our revenues globally coming from the partner ecosystem. In Q1 this year, we had 75% of new business or reactivated buyers coming from the channel ecosystem, which tells you that there is a strong momentum, understanding, and growth coming from the channel ecosystem. From my own perspective, with the investments that we have put in, the simplification process, and with the capabilities that we are able to bring to the partner, I think it's a win-win situation for both of us,” he said.

Bharadwaj also mentioned that he is now focused on ensuring partners become a trusted advisor from a customer point of view. This includes making the whole AI factory available for partners.

“Unlike the CPU world, this is much faster. How do the partners stay ahead of the new technology wave that's coming? The AI roadmaps are very critical. The validated designs are industry specific. The biggest thing we've been enabling some of our partners is AI sovereignty. That's something which partners would have struggled to just create on their own. That's an enabler. And finally, we’re helping them with real use cases. That's the whole end-to-end ecosystem. I feel privileged to be here because this is a completely new discussion that has evolved in the last maybe one year. The partners are excited about this as well. The opportunity is a lot,” he concluded.

With additional reporting from ORyan Johnson.