[March 29, 2007]

Intel Forms Strategic Alliance with Haier, Suning

(SinoCast China IT Week Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BEIJING, March 30, SinoCast -- The world's largest chipmaker Intel Corporation announced strategic alliance with Suning Corporation and Haier Group on sale of Intel chips-based computers on March 28.

The alliance will be based on the advantageous resources of three industry leaders, ranging from chip technology, industrial manufacturing to retail and covering every link of the industrial chain.

With the alliance, Intel aims to fight back fierce attack from its strong rival AMD, which successfully poached the market share of Intel with price weapon last year. As a result, Intel had suffered from eroded net profit for Q4 and reduced market share in China.

To fight back, Intel has launched aggressive reform by upgrading its China Region into the fifth independent region that directly reports to the headquarters. Intel China Region will seek to bring more opportunities for development and mutual benefit to its channel distributors by forging ahead with more localized market and channel strategy.

' Seduced by the prominent advantages of Suning in brand recognition, cash flow, and commercial environment, Intel built experience areas in the flagship stores of Suning last year, and achieved good effect. Intel shows strong confidence in the growth value of China's electrical appliance chains, and Suning is its most ideal partner in China.' Considering IT products take 15.1% of China's CNY 650 billion electrical appliance market, and present rapid growth, Suning has been making every effort to promote IT product sales, notes Suning chairman Zhang Jindong.

Suning has determined this year as the 3C construction year, and believes that cooperation will Intel, an absolutely influential brand in the world's IT industry, will definitely help Suning move closer to its strategic objective.

After both parties have reached consensus on strategic cooperation, Haier Group, the leading home appliance maker in China, has become the optimum bridge between Intel and Suning.

Haier and Suning have forged long-term stable strategic cooperation by creating a joint venture in 2004, and contribute the largest sales growth to the other party at present.

Moreover, Haier is the only Chinese PC maker that has collaborated with AMD, and thus has received the strongest support from Intel. On March 14, Yang Xu, general manager of Intel China Region, met Haier chairman Zhang Ruimin in Qingdao, and both parties have established special teams to promote cooperation. As a result, Intel and Haier have unanimously chosen Suning as the strategic partner in attacking the IT market.

The Intel-Haier-Suning strategic alliance covers a broad range of fields, ranging from research and development and product manufacturing to marketing and sales, in an effort to maximize integration of resources and market competitiveness.

Industry analysts point out that the channel strategy shakeup by Intel is not only aimed to fight back AMD, but more importantly to maintain the core competitiveness of chip technologies. As the most information-based retail chain with universal consumer data and reaction, Suning will help Intel to precisely master the market development and always lead the industry.

Suning and Haier have signed CNY 1 billion computer deal, and Intel will chips to Haier at the most preferential price.

Copyright 2007 Sinocast

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]

Discussions: