Micro-Star moves into the electronics sector with laptops

In a bid to maintain growth as the motherboard sector matures, the nation's fourth-largest motherboard maker, Micro-Star International Co (微星), yesterday entered the consumer electronics market by launching a range of portable computers and other electronics products.

"As the industry is not as promising as before, in terms of both shipments and gross margins, motherboard makers have to expand into non-motherboard businesses for future growth," said Henry Liu (盧琪隆), Micro-Star's senior sales and marketing vice president.

By introducing its own-brand laptops as well as products like MP3 players and multimedia players, the company hopes to gain a foothold in the increasingly popular consumer electronics market after investing in information technology appliances for the past three to four years.

Micro-Star hopes to ship 350,000 laptops -- half bearing its own name -- this year.

The company regards China and other developing countries, where the market is growing by up to 35 percent a year, as its main targets.

Sambora Cheng (程惠正), the company's marketing project manager, however, shied away from predicting sales of the new model MEGABook, priced at NT$54,900 in the domestic market.

Sales of personal computers are expected to reach 1.5 million units in Taiwan this year, 37 percent of them notebooks, according to estimates by International Data Corporation (IDC).

The top four vendors, led by Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), dominated last year, holding a combined 80 percent of the market.