Maxtor aims to raise profile on Continent

Peripherals Vendor opts for European push to compete with rivals.

US hard drive vendor Maxtor has admitted that its Europeanrivals. distribution channel is under-utilised and intends to push more product over the next year to increase brand awareness.

Didier Trassaert, vice president for European sales at Maxtor, said approximately 80 per cent of its business goes through strategic partnership and OEM agreements with PC vendors.

'We are aiming for a 70:30 split this year, but wanting and having are two different things,' he said.

'We want to develop our brand awareness through advertising and direct marketing. Our drives are used by the top 10 PC manufacturers in the world - we should be telling people that,' added Trassaert.

Maxtor currently has five pan-European distributors, including CHS Electronics and Tech Data, with Enta working as its UK local distributor, but had no plans to change the line-up.

Peter Rigby, director of marketing and communications at CHS, agreed that there was a need to raise brand awareness.

'The disk drive market is volatile and most resellers will buy on price,' he said.

'Maxtor can compete in this area with all the key players, but when resellers want drives for something other than low price, the names Seagate, Western Digital and Quantum are far more likely to come up in conversation. Maxtor is up against some well-established names that have been successful in this market for a long time,' added Rigby.

Maxtor re-iterated that it will continue to concentrate on selling high end, high-tech drives to the larger OEMs, but also conceded that its drives were being used in a bargain PC offer which is currently running in France.