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Microsoft Malaysia today welcomed six new authorised resellers to the Microsoft Devices Program to support the growth of its Surface business. The move is part of a measured and phased approach to meet growing demand by Malaysian businesses for the Surface tablet. Microsoft’s first ever consumer tablet – Surface RT was introduced to the Malaysian market in April this year. The pro version – Surface Pro was subsequently outed in June.
The Surface sold over 900,000 units in Q1 2013, taking 1.8% of tablet marketshare in the US (IDC, 2013). What’s interesting is that the more expensive Surface Pro made up a large percentage of Surface unit sales.
The newly appointed group of commercial resellers include:
- Alphamatic Systems Sdn Bhd
- CTC Global
- Felda Prodata Systems Sdn Bhd
- Jardine OneSolution Sdn Bhd
- Night Electronics (M) Sdn Bhd
- Sistem RKK Sdn Bhd
Ingram Micro Malaysia Sdn Bhd will still serve as sole distributor to all authorised commercial device resellers.
http://vernonchan.com/tag/microsoft-malaysia/
More photos on Flickr.
With the addition of Malaysia, the commercial availability for Surface is now 29 countries including the latest countries – Hong Kong, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand in the Asia Pacific region.
With the new partnership, the new resellers will offer Microsoft’s extended warranty and accidental damage coverage; value-added services such as asset tagging, custom imaging, kitting, onsite service and support, device recycling, and data protection for the Surface family.
According to Microsoft, more businesses are turning to Surface as a device of choice for its productivity capabilities, packaged in a consumer-friendly form factor.
Just several days ago, Microsoft celebrated a win for its mobile device – Delta Airlines announced that it would be equipping its 11,000 pilots with new Surface 2 tablets to replace its traditional paper document flight bags. Delta Airlines earlier announced it is supplying nearly 20,000 flight attendants with Windows Phone smartphones to be used for in-flight transactions, passenger manifest information and more.
Azizah Ali, Director of Small and Medium Solutions and Partners, Microsoft Malaysia said at the press conference earlier today, “The addition of these authorised resellers greatly expands the reach of the Microsoft devices-and-services strategy, extending the company’s family of devices enabled by cloud services to more organisations. This is very much in line with what we’ve been striving to do since the launch of Surface – to provide avenues for businesses to harness the power of Surface, and today, Malaysian businesses will have more commercial options in terms of purchasing Surface, allowing them to concentrate on what matters most – building their businesses.”
At the press event, Microsoft invited JAC Photography, a company specialising in events and portraitures to share about how they adopted the Surface RT and Microsoft services into their workflow and improving productivity and efficiency in the business. Chris Choong, entrepreneur and co-founder of JAC Photography & PhotoMe.my demonstrated how their workflow setup of Surface RTs coupled with Windows 8-based notebooks and SkyDrive delivers a new enhanced event experience for their customers.
Satisfied customers and growing reputation aside, JAC Photography has been able to increase up to 15% in terms of efficiency and productivity, translating to better ROI.
Azizah added later, “Chris’ example today underscores a growing demand by businesses for Surface and reaffirms our decision to appoint our six new commercial resellers to support this need. We look forward to working closely with our partners, both now and in the future, to better server our commercial customers.”
Microsoft naturally has not forgotten their general consumers, also recently expanding the authorised consumer retailer network in Malaysia to 11. The retailers are Challenger Technologies, Harvey Norman Malaysia, SNS Network and Thunder Match Technology, Aone Plus Supplies & Services, IT One SuperStore, Machanics, MTCS Group, PC Image, SenQ and Viewnet Computer System.
Keep an eye out for our Surface Pro review, running Windows 8.1.
