Revealed: Smartphones, tablets, TVs Dubai buyers made No 1 at Gitex Shopper 2013

Dubai’s Gitex Shopper 2013, which came to an end on Saturday, October 12, has retailers reporting impressive figures of growth rates between five to 15 per cent.

However what surprised retailers at Gitex was the success of laptops and netbooks, which continued to out-perform other categories.

Laptops and netbooks

At Jacky’s, laptops and netbooks were the number one seller at Gitex Shopper 2013, followed by smartphones and TVs.
“We were expecting laptops to have a poor show based on several estimates, including IDC forecasts. But it was surprising to everyone that it continues to do well,” said to Ashish Panjabi, COO of Jacky’s Electronics.

Nadeem Khanzadah, head of retail, Jumbo Electronics, said the impressive performance was because of attractive pricing and better strategy. “When people find value in a product they will definitely opt for it,” he said.

According to Ashish, Intel Core i5 models did extremely well and nearly sold out across most brands, showing that customers wanted more mid-tier laptops.

Both Dell and HP introduced new models this Gitex Shopper in an effort to attract customers.

Smartphones

The other major attracting was the smartphone segment. “Last year we witnessed Nokia as the number one seller in terms of volume, this year it could well be Samsung. There has been a shift from feature phones to smartphones,” said Khanzadah.

Most retailers were unanimous about the impressive performance of both the Samsung S4 and the newly launched Note 3.

According to figures released by Jacky’s even the Samsung Galaxy S3 sold extremely well along with the S4, following price drops.
“Galaxy Note 3 was the best of all the new releases.

HTC One and the One Mini did well as did Lenovo,” added Ashish.
BlackBerry Z10 too witnessed better than expected sales especially due to price cuts.

The smartphone which until recently was selling for over Dh2,000, was on sale during Gitex Shopper for Dh1,200 and in some stores for Dh999.
Emirates 24|7 had reported how Apple products continued to out-sell its rivals, wherever they were made available.

Smart TV

Meanwhile, within the Smart TV segment too Samsung continued to lead closely followed by LG and Sony.

While the 32-inch segment had very few buyers, bigger sized TV's had exceptional demand, especially 55" and 60" TV's.

Gitex Shopper saw the introduction of the OLED Smart TVs with bendable display by both Samsung and LG for the first time in this market.

The show itself saw impressive attendance as the last few days witnessed more participants from Cityscape Global and other exhibitions and forums being held simultaneously at the Trade Centre.

Better access

Visitors to the Gitex Shopper this year around also had the benefit of using the additional parking ground near the Zabeel area.

However, many were seen parking their cars close to the Metro stations and taking the train to the exhibition venue. A team of salesgirls were seen selling the entry tickets for the Shopper right outside the Trade Centre Metro station. 
 

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