Aftershock eyes corporate PC market

Singapore’s homegrown custom PC supplier Aftershock PC is venturing into the corporate PC market, looking beyond its traditional customer base made up of mostly gamers and PC enthusiasts.

The company has recently set up a dedicated corporate sales team to assist and serve its business customers more effectively.

It has also expanded its support team which now accounts for almost half of its total headcount, according to Jonathan Teo, marketing lead at Aftershock, adding that the move was made in response to the rising demand for PC support services.

Aftershock currently counts organisations such as ST Electronics, Bandai Namco and a handful of Singapore universities as clients. Teo said the demand for custom PCs from organisations is driven by advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which benefit from the parallel processing capabilities of high-end graphics processors.

He added that amid the pandemic when working from home has become the norm, the adoption of custom PCs and laptops in the corporate segment has also accelerated. “We saw the increase in demand for our systems being used for work among corporate partners and individuals.”

To keep pace with the needs of corporate customers, Teo said Aftershock “keeps an open and candid relationship with our partners, to help us understand ourselves and explore different ways to improve”.

“This also allow us to have better insights on our products and services so we can improve ourselves and to serve our partners even better,” he added.

With service and support being vital to corporate PC buyers, Teo said Aftershock offers after-sales support and as well as maintenance services. “We also provide lifetime maintenance services for customers, so they can come back anytime for diagnostic and cleaning services at no additional cost.”

Teo said depending on the volume of service requests, on average the company can perform most servicing and repairs within three to six business days.

Aftershock is currently considering a desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) offering, where PCs are supplied and maintained on a subscription basis.

“The team is looking into this and is in discussions with some of our corporate partners regarding these types of arrangements,” Teo said. “However, it is still in the very early stages in our roadmap and once we have a clearer view of this, we will then be able to share more.”

According to IDC, worldwide shipments of traditional PCs, inclusive of desktops, notebooks and workstations, reached 83.6 million units in the second quarter of 2021, up 13.2% from the second quarter of 2020.

The analyst firm said elevated demand for PCs, combined with shortages that greatly impacted the supply of notebooks, led to desktop growth outpacing that of notebooks during the quarter.

“The PC market’s hot streak continued to drive heavy investments from the supply side including the entry of new vendors as well as additional spend from underdogs,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC.

While the top five PC suppliers – Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple and Acer – continue to account for most of the world’s PC shipments, Ubrani said smaller vendors have helped drive growth by offering unique features or niche designs.