The nation's notebook vendors are cutting their prices in droves in an effort to pep up a market affected by a slumping stock market and political disturbance the second quarter, which is traditionally slow.
"The recent rollercoaster movements on the stock market have shrunk people's wallets and political turbulence has impacted con-sumers' willingness to purchase laptops," said a marketing manager at Acer Inc, the world's fifth largest personal-computer (PC) maker.
The absence of big computer exhibitions recently also cooled the market, said a manager surnamed Chen, who did not want to be identified.
In a bid to stimulate demand, Acer initiated a second wave of price cuts earlier this week by rolling out a 15-inch laptop model with Intel Corp's 1.5 MHz Pentium M central processing unit, priced at less than NT$45,000 instead of more than NT$50,000 as usual.
The laptop sector saw a round of price cuts during the Softex software and computer exhibition last month as companies tried to boost business and get rid of their overstock.
Chen said Acer would also promote its Tablet PCs by offering consumers nearly NT$10,000 worth of gifts, including Microsoft's Office software.
The company expected to become the nation's largest laptop vendor in the current quarter through these promotions, Chen said.
Chen, however, shied away from giving the company's sales targets.
Hewlett-Packard Taiwan Ltd (HP) said it has been offering price reductions since it decided during the Softex show to adopt a low-price strategy in order to sell notebooks in an overcrowded market this year.
"We use constant promotions to stimulate consumers' interest," said Kate Hsu (許玉佩), marketing and public relations manager with HP's personal system group.
"We have promotion activities aimed at different segments almost every week," she said.
Since the Softex show HP has been focusing on the student market with its laptops priced at less than NT$30,000.
It launched an upgraded model of its 15-inch laptop at the same price last week.
On Monday HP rolled out a 15.4-inch laptop with wide screen and Intel's latest Pentium M CPU aimed at high-end users and priced at NT$68,900, NT$4,000 less than the original price.
The company hopes to sell 90,000 units in this country this year and Hsu said it has achieved 35 percent of the target so far.
However, some vendors are not joining in the price cutting.
Sunny Han (
"We will stick to our `no price cut' policy set earlier this year," said Lisa Chen (
IBM will launch its new laptop products at the end of this month, Chen said.
The market's new player, Micro-Star International Co (
"Building up an image of style in consumers' mind is our top prior-ity," said Sambora Cheng (
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