IBM Corp is finally considering breaking its long-time design rule and produce a notebook computer that isn't black.
A local analyst said he had heard about Big Blue's plan to produce non-black notebooks because its all-black ThinkPad range had begun to turn customers off.
"Competition in the laptop market is sizzling," said Joseph Lee (
"While there are no big differences in the functions and equipment between products at the same price level, the appearance may become the deciding factor," he said.
A wider choice of colors could help the company improve its market position, Lee said.
An IBM Taiwan official said on condition of anonymity that the company had recognized that the lack of a choice of colors was losing it customers.
Consumers may see the company introduce notebooks in other colors and designs for the household laptop market in the second half of this year, the official said.
It is possible that the new products will be marketed under another brand to differentiate it from the ThinkPad brand, he added.
IBM Corp is the third-largest personal computer (PC) vendor worldwide with shipments of 2.2 million units, or 5.5 percent of the global market, in the first quarter of this year, according to figures released by International Data Corporation last week.
Dell Inc is the No. 1 global PC vendor with a market share of 18.6 percent, followed by Hewlett-Packard Corp (HP) with 15.6 percent.
In Taiwan, IBM was the fourth-largest notebook brand with sales of 72,000 units, or 15.2 percent of the market, last year. Asustek Computer Inc (
Another analyst, however, said that local consumers were more concerned with price, specifications, functions and weight than the exterior design.
"Taiwanese consumers often decide their price segment first and then choose products of suitable functions and standards in the segment," said Amy Teng (鄧雅君), an analyst at Gartner Inc.
The best-selling computers cost between NT$40,000 and NT$50,000, Teng said.
IBM Corp and its South Korean original equipment manufacturer, LG Electronics, launched its non-black laptop X-Note in South Korea last year.
The product could be rolled out here in the fourth quarter this year, Hank Horng (
Horng said the company would not follow the lead of HP and slash prices amid increased competition. HP said earlier this month it was cutting the price of its notebook by up to NT$8,000 this year.
IBM has also aggressively entered the nation's printer cartridge market, worth NT$4.2 billion annually, by launching carbon refill rolls that are compatible with HP's laserjet printers at between 45 percent and 68 percent less than HP's own refills.
"We hope to lift the revenue that comes from refills to 30 percent of our annual sales from 10 percent this year," Horng said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to