In a no-holds discussion, Anand Subramanya, Director – Product Marketing, Consumer and Small Business, Dell Technologies, India talks about the Indian PC gaming market at the back of the release of the new Alienware X14 and M15 R7 gaming laptops.

While work from home and online classes took center stage, gaming too became a thing. As a PC maker, what trends did you see in the gaming sector during the pandemic?

When individuals were stuck at home during the lockdown, they were spending a lot of time at work, and afterward for leisure, they likewise wanted to have some good fun beyond films, and so on, where gaming got quite enormous. Sometime in the past individuals used to have various PCs, one for work and one explicitly for gaming needs, and so on. Yet, presently one of the enormous patterns which have come is this multi-reason gadget. How would you get one product or one laptop which can do what you like to do during your work and which can expand as a gaming gadget? That has prompted the development of a lot of innovations that products like Alienware and G Series.

That has likewise prompted the pattern where gaming is the quickest developing section inside the general PC as a classification. The other thing is we have seen that during particularly the most recent two years, you have a wide range of individuals playing games, even a lot of teens, is what you typically partner gamers with however at that point men, even a ton of women, they all have begun playing games, so gaming has truly gone about as a unifier where multi-purpose multiplayer games, and so on are binding together various individuals and afterward another pattern we saw was gaming has truly moved past Tier 1 cities; how the situation is playing out now is particularly in Tier 2, Tier 3 cities – gigantic reception of online gaming has occurred and that is likewise bringing about the reception of PC in those areas.

Indeed, even Esports as a section has truly developed. If you recall around 3-4 years back we used to have a couple or three significant gaming tournaments which we can call Esports, yet last year I recollect something like 15-20 of them occurred. Different more modest organizations have come up, and some of the large acquisitions likewise occurred in the gaming space that way – Esports is developing, multi-purpose gadgets are developing, gaming has gone about as a unifier, across demographics individuals are utilizing it, and it’s going beyond Tier 1 cities.

Back in the day, if anyone wanted to get into gaming, it was either a console or an expensive PC assembled from Nehru Place. However, today gaming laptops are custom-built PCs, with high refresh displays, latest GPUs, and advanced cooling systems Your views on the growth of this segment?

If you take a gander at the most recent five years, the gaming section (PC) has developed very nearly 20 times. This year there are nearly 1,000,000 gadgets in CY23. That is colossal, according to a number perspective and these are IDC numbers. In any case, when we take a gander at our product, for what reason is a consumer purchasing a PC? We released Alienware X14 as of late. Assuming you view that as a product as a multi-purpose gadget, the product prior used to be bulky or thermals were such an extent that you must have a thick profile and afterward you need to carry it alongside exceptionally weighty connectors and your battery duration despite all that would associate with 2-3 hours, not more than that.

Alienware as a product and as a brand has been in the industry for over 25 years now and we have been somewhat molding the patterns in the gaming section as a brand. What we have checked out and dealt with is, making plans according to the customer’s requirements. We pay attention to the customers, their criticism, and what they are wanting and they were precisely getting out whatever you are saying that individuals need a solitary gadget that is slender and light, so we made Alienware pretty thin and the X14 is the thinnest 14-inch gaming laptop on the planet. How technology development has improved and we are truly zeroing in on it and what is making some of these things conceivable is the element of the plan, the element of the quality of material that we use, and the advancement that we are heading to get these things going. A portion of these things is driving this progression.

The semiconductor shortage affects multiple industries and in terms of the tech industry, the graphics card industry was affected even today buying a full-size 3080/3090 graphics card is very difficult for a desktop PC. There are a lot of laptops with mobile GPUs of the 30 series. Do you shortage in terms of the full-size graphics card has helped the gaming laptop industry?

I won’t remark on the shortage, yet the demand on the customer side and the need are truly rising and something needs to satisfy that demand, and the gadgets with the advancement that are emerging from organizations like Dell is the thing that is taking special care of that need. What’s more, I accept that when the market is developing at the speed that I referenced, there is space for everybody, and this development of laptops as a sub-portion of gaming will keep on being there.

With the Alienware X14 and m15 R7, how important was it to make it that slim form factor?

The structure factor was critical since we truly wanted to tune in and take care of our consumer’s requirements. We have our listening forums where our groups pay attention to the customer; they take a gander at community websites, and social media and there’s a ton of exploration that goes behind planning a product like X14 or m15 because both are serving various necessities of the customer. The X14 is quite possibly the thinnest product. It is addressing the requirements of our customers who’re searching for a gadget that is little yet strong and sufficiently versatile. Though the m15 is the most remarkable 15-inch Alienware laptop of all time. It has perhaps one of the most impressive graphics cards alongside 170-Watt TDP execution. These are truly powerful gadgets, so when we plan these products, we stand by listening to customers’ feedback, we take a gander at what their necessities are, and afterward, we show up at these two products were one of which is taking special care of the mobile customer and the one which is taking care of the eager for power customer who is truly searching for solid gadgets.

What kind of initiatives is Dell taking in organizing an Esports tournament, or encouraging the whole community about the new devices and technologies? How is Dell engaging with them?

In one of our surveys we saw that practically 49% of women have begun playing during the pandemic and they began with cell phones and practically 37% of the mobile gamers say that they need to move to PC gaming.

Our conviction is that gaming is a unifier and independent of what your gender is, one should be comprehensive and we consider this valuable chance to be a truly comprehensive effort. We do Dell Futurist, a program that is into its third release. We have a partnership with Team Liquid worldwide and we have Ankit Panth from Team Brutality, who is our brand representative, and what we do here is arrange gaming master classes for college-goers. We organize a gaming master class for individuals at large and then customers interact with our representatives and they comprehend how to work on their gaming, what sort of gadgets they can use, how to have the best gaming setup for you, and know them to have a possibility winning and further develop their performance when they are playing. These are the things that we as of now do today and we’ve been doing throughout the previous three years.

Asus and Lenovo have launched their gaming mobile phones as well. As you said, mobile phone gaming is a huge sector, PUBG when it came just took off and now multiplayer voice chat-enabled games are the flavor of the season and Alienware is a very famous brand. Everybody relates the alien face design to a gaming laptop. Do you think we would ever see an Alienware gaming phone as well?

I’m not supposed to remark on it, however, it’s like we as an organization truly accept that gaming is a unifier and we embrace all types of gaming. Our conviction is that there is an entry to an experience and afterward customers develop. Individuals who use it like I’ve quoted at some point back that, “About 37% of the consumers who were surveyed said they want to go to a PC at some point in time”. We see immense opportunities in our core area for us to address the user’s requirements and that is where our focus will be.

The Alienware X14 and m15 have CryoTech technology for thermal management, being incredibly thin, how did you manage to keep the temperatures in check without affecting performance?

What occurs with Alienware’s Cryo-Tech™ cooling technology is that you have progressed thermal cooling, there we have four different fans running at four different velocities to disperse the heat. Moreover, we have something many refer to as ‘Component 31’ which is a gallium-based TIM encapsulated in silicone that gives exceptional cooling security to the laptop and that is the way we accomplish it.

Allow me to put it unexpectedly when we utilize the Cryo-Tech™ technology, we have areas of strength for exceptionally execution, and what Cryo-Tech™ technology does is it lessens the interior temperature through the freely controlled fans that I referenced and we have an extraordinary CPU fume chamber where we use liquid phases to disseminate the heat. Using this special technology accessible just on Alienware, we can achieve practically 25% better improvement in thermal resistance for our users who want to play for quite a while on a gaming laptop.

What should customers look out for this year from Alienware and Dell?

We’ll keep on having these new products accessible to the user and gaming overall is a really important area for ourselves and you will see significantly more news hearing from us in the days to come during the festivals and during the school campaign, we are additionally running different offers like warranty upgrade, simple EMI to make consumer purchase experience simpler.

Credit: Times Now