Slow sales at show spur hopes for weekend

Participants at the Taipei Computer Applications Show said yesterday most exhibition-goers appear to be window-shopping on the first two days of the fair, not seeking deals.

The companies are hoping this weekend will trigger a purchasing spree, they said.

"Most of people are going window shopping than actually doing purchasing at the early stages of the show, as consumers often expect more promotions later on," said Calvin Chang (張敬仁), a marketing vice president at Acer Inc.

The weekend and final day of the show is normally the peak sales time, often accounting for 80 percent of his company's sales target for the show, Chang said.

He said Acer expects to make 35 percent of its sales target of 15,000 units for next month at the show. Acer hopes to ship 120,000 notebooks domestically and 3.5 million units worldwide this year, he said.

Acer launched four new notebook models equipped with the new Dothan central processing unit (CPUs) earlier this week.

Asustek Computer Inc's (華碩電腦) officials, however, said they had a lot of business on the show's first two days.

"The transactions on the first day were 32 percent more than a year ago, which equals about 300 laptops," said Stephanie Su (蘇詩涵), Asustek's marketing specialist.

Asustek hoped to sell around 6,500 laptops in the five-day show. It expects to sell 200,000 notebooks domestically and a total of 1.3 million worldwide this year.

Smaller competitor BenQ Corp (明基電通) also reported doing decent business so far, but is still counting on the weekend to spur sales.

BenQ has sold around 500 laptops so far, 70 percent of which were its promotional model, the Joybook 5000U-T33, which is priced at NT$36,900, said Ken Wang (王瓊樟), marketing senior manager at BenQ Asia Pacific Corp (明基 亞太), the company's marketing arm.

BenQ aims to sell between 4,000 and 5,000 laptops both at the show and through distribution channels during the exhibition, and 80,000 units nationwide this year.

Officials said liquid-crystal display (LCD) monitors are proving a key attraction to consumers.

BenQ dropped the price of its LCD monitors between 15 percent to 20 percent last month in the hopes of boosting market share to 30 percent in the third quarter from the current level of about 20 percent to 22 percent, said Danny Yao (姚鴻州), BenQ Asia-Pacific's president for sales.

It now costs less than NT$11,000 to get a 17-inch LCD monitor at the show, Yao said.

BenQ has sold 500 LCD monitors so far at the show and has a sales target of 2,000 and 3,000 monitors for the exhibition, according to BenQ Asia Pacific's marketing specialist Derrick Tseng (曾致暐).

Tsann Kuen Group (燦坤), the nation's largest electronics chain store in terms of sales, has 12 booths at the show, and is offering NT$3,000 worth of discounts and a 24-month no-interest instalment plan to people who purchase laptops from its 147 outlets between July 29 and next Wednesday, a public relations assistant manager, surnamed Hsu, said.

Tsann Kuen Group has set a target of NT$500 million in sales during the promotion.

The Taipei Computer Association (台北市電腦公會) said a total of 100,558 people visited the show on the first two days.