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David Lim

AFTER nearly five decades of assembling, marketing and popularizing Sony, Samsung and other country’s electronic appliances, Elena Lim and her equally-driven children are slowly, steadily, finally building a Philippine-branded electronics line.

After the surprise success of its “my/phone” dual-SIM phone—the first and still cheapest dual-SIM phone in the market is said to have already built an 8-percent market share since it was introduced only a year ago—the Lims yesterday unveiled the my/screen LCD television, which, like the price-cutting cellular phone, is built by the Lims’ electronics factory in China.

Unknown to the local market, the Lims manufacture and sell their own China-brand “Amoy” TV and cell phones in the mainland, a thriving business unfortunately not folded within their public-listed Solid Group.

Still, the 45-hectare Shenzhen factory has become the R&D and production platform for the Philippine distribution and marketing of entry-level phones and LCD panels for the Solid Group.

According to an excited Solid Group chief executive and president David Lim, the company in the next few months will also roll out the cheapest FM-radio-plus-flashlight cell phone (about $25, or less than P1,200, retail price), aside from an AM/FM radio dual-SIM cell phone, and the “cheapest” QWERTY keyboard, Windows Mobile-powered, single-SIM cell phone, which should retail at around P8,500.

The success of Globe’s TM Mobile for offering the market’s pocket-friendliest camera-phone from my/phone at P1,990 has already attracted the attention of taipan John Gokongwei’s price-busting Sun Cellular, which now also plans to bundle my/phone with both its pre-paid and post-paid plans.

Apparently, the strategy of Solid Group is to build feature-rich, entry-level phones that the giants like Nokia and Motorola have abandoned and, from there, graduate to higher-end, higher-margin models.

Still, rather than compete on price, Solid Group is taking a leaf from the phone companies by bundling its LCD TV to its cable-TV arm, Destiny Cable, such that a 16-inch my/screen LCD set is thrown free for every two-year, P888-a-month subscription to Destiny Cable.

And from LCD production, Solid Group plans to move up the value chain by introducing its own LCD notebooks, hopefully in time for the Christmas shopping rush.

Unlike their foreign competitors, the Lims have the added advantage, through four decades of selling Sony, of controlling the retail end of the market with their Avid and AV Surfer chain of electronics stores.

As well, the Solid Group also controls the service centers, the fulfillment side of the business, with 32 branches in Metro Manila and key provincial cities.

“Right now, we’re the only one in the business that guarantees a replacement phone for every customer whose unit we could not fix within seven days,” said David Lim.

by: Victor C. Agustine

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