HOPING to fuel the increase in the market share of Apple iPhone products in the region, Power Mac Center Inc. has set up an aftersales and training center in Cebu.
The center is the sixth Apple Authorized Service Provider (ASP) in the country which they hope to cater to the aftersales needs of Apple customers in the Visayas, said Joey Alvarez, Power Mac Center marketing director, in an interview last week.
“We’ve been in the country for 20 years now and we see a lot of growth especially here in past years that is why we decided to finally come and offer our services,” said Alvarez.
Power Mac Center is the premier distributor of Apple products in the country.
While Power Mac Center is into three areas – retail, service center and training center, they’d like to focus first on the service and training segment and will look at opportunities in the retail segment soon, Alvarez said.
“We can sell Apple products in the corporate and education space which we think still has a lot of potential for growth here with Cebu being both an economic center and an education hub,” he said.
The Power Mac Center is at the ground level of Creativo IT Center II at the Cebu Business Park.
It has two training rooms that can accommodate up to 30 people and two classes in a day.
Starting January 15, the center will be offering free training to Cebuanos which covers the Meet iOS7, OS X Mavericks, iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand for Mac.
By February, they will also start offering Apple Certification Courses.
“Here, we have a total of four engineers, two Apple certified and two Mac certified to support our operations here in Cebu which is the second largest center we have in the country,” said Alvarez.
At present, Power Mac Center has 17 retail stores nationwide and six service centers including the Cebu center.
Based on market data, there were 4.6 million smartphones sold in 2012 and this year it is expected to reach 5.6 million units which cuts across price ranges from as low as P3,000 to as high as P50,000 for premium products like the iPhone./Reporter Aileen Garcia-Yap