AMD Sees SMEs as the Solution to Revitalize the IT Market

With IT enterprises more focused on throwing accusations at one another and with the economical crisis, the IT industry hasn't been doing as well as it should have. Well, the industry itself may be fine, but the marketing side certainly hasn't reached the highest level this year. To somehow improve the sales and people's willingness to purchase computing equipment, AMD turned to small and medium-sized enterprises.

“We think SMEs will be the first part of the commercial sector to grow,” Leslie Sobon, vice president of worldwide product marketing at AMD, told V3.co.uk. “The sector is more transactional; its purchasing is less cyclical and dependent on refresh cycles. With Windows 7 being reviewed so well that could help growth – this is not a community that waits for service pack one.”

AMD believes that SME-business behavior is what will lead the IT sector out of its current condition. This behavior is mainly based on the difference between the US and European markets. The most interesting fact about the SMEs is that they seem to act similarly to consumers. SMEs tend to buy from retail or online sources. To respond to these conditions, AMD had been channeling most of its marketing efforts into training retail staff and increasing point-of-sale information on new systems. However, the fact is that IT knowledge among European retail staff is significantly poorer. This led to AMD changing its marketing strategy according to certain areas where its services were made available.

“It's anecdotal but in Europe it seems like buying a computer is like buying toaster,” Sobon said. “In Europe you don't get people to help you. But it all either comes together or falls about in the retailer so the best money we spend is in training the staff.”

AMD plans to bring out more products intended for SMEs and, thus, increase the general performance of the IT market. Leslie Sobon cited President Obama's $15bn small and medium-sized loan program and said that it would most likely encourage computer-equipment purchasing in this sector. AMS is now trying to adjust its chipsets to be more retail-friendly. As such, it has started the Vision campaign.

“End users are now using PCs very differently than just a few years ago. Video is now ubiquitous,” Sobon shared. “We are going to stop talking to buyers about processors, because it's not their first consideration. They want to know, can it play games? Does it run video well? Can it play high-definition content? That's how we're going to start speaking to them.”

With this tactic, Advanced Micro Devices hopes it will not only revitalize computer sales in the mid and low-end markets, but also secure a significant percentage of those segments. “The bulk of the [laptop] market is still going to be 14in, 15in and 16in laptops this holiday season,” Sobon said.