New Kids on the Block

Entry of Chinese players in enterprise market will initially lead to a price war, but companies need to focus on innovation

It was a flat year for the Indian enterprise equipment market, but things are warming up this year. According to VOICE&DATA, the total enterprise equipment market was estimated to be 24,023 crore in FY11, with growth of around 0.87%.

The Indian market has a strong dominance of Cisco, but the coming of the Chinese players will definitely help in widening the market. Not only this, the market will also witness a massive price war not only in the traditional networking products but also in the new upcoming technologies like cloud computing and smart grid.

The entry of Huawei and ZTE in the Indian market will give a big boost to the enterprise market, as both companies are planning to offer a complete bouquet of services catering to all types of customers—large, medium, and small. With solutions catering to all kinds of enterprises, the Chinese companies are also focusing on innovation in a big way. One has to see how ZTE and Huawei can give a good fight to the US biggies like Cisco and Juniper.

India Strategy

Huawei is entering the India market with a complete bouquet of services, which includes networking products—router and switch; unified communication—unified communication, telepresense, and call center products; and IT products—modular data center, cloud computing desktop, and virtual solutions like wireless banking, GSM-R, and smart grid. The company is focusing on office communication, surveillance, and home entertainment solution and has invested around $15-20 mn for setting an enterprise division in the country.

ZTE is also entering India market with a complete portfolio of products which includes routers, switches, servers, video surveillance, videoconferencing, telepresence, IP PBX, SIP phones, IPTV, set-