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Tatung, CMC Magnetics ink marketing deal

"CMC will be able to rely on our channels nationwide as well as our expertise in the 3C [computer, communication and consumer electronics] field to market their new products."

Lin Wei-shan, Tatung's president

Tatung Co (大同), the nation's oldest home appliance maker, and CMC Magnetics Corp (中環), the world's biggest maker of recordable discs used in DVD players, yesterday announced that they were teaming up to take advantage of the booming home-entertainment market.

Under the newly-inked partnership, each company can market its products at the other's retail outlets, company executives said at a press conference yesterday.

"CMC will be able to rely on our channels nationwide as well as our expertise in the 3C [computer, communication and consumer electronics] field to market their new products," said Tatung's president Lin Wei-shan (林蔚山).

In a bid to tap the home entertainment market, optical media-storage maker CMC has been extending its operations in recent years, getting involved in entertainment video content and home video rentals.

Last month the company rolled out a digital mobile entertainment product -- a karaoke microphone -- under the brand name Teon.

The microphones, priced at NT$6,990, have a built-in capacity of 50 music videos and can carry a total of up to 350 videos with a memory card. The card costs NT$990.

Unlike conventional karaoke machines now found in homes, bars and karaoke clubs, the Teon microphone enables users to sing anywhere they want -- as long as their is a television set they can plug the mike into.

"The partnership with Tatung allows CMC to market the microphone through Tatung's nearly 1,000 stores nationwide by bundling it with promotions for their liquid crystal display [LCD] TVs," said Colin Chien (簡昭璜), CMC's information appliance director.

"We hope to sell 30,000 microphones in Taiwan in the first year after the launch," Chien said.

CMC expects to sell 300,000 of the microphones in China in the first 12 months after the device is launched in that country at the end of this year, he said.

Tatung, meanwhile, could use the partnership to display and sell its LCD TVs and plasma-display-panel (PDP) TVs at CMC's video rental chain Asia 1 (亞藝影音), the country's second-largest rental chain, with around 110 outlets nationwide, Lin said.

The 85-year-old Tatung hopes the collaboration with CMC will help it revamp its image into a more youthful brand.

Tatung, which aims to ship 500,000 LCD TVs and 50,000 PDP TVs worldwide this year, launched a new series of MP3 players last week under the brand name "elio." The company is planning to distribute its "elio"' product line through Asia 1 in the future, Lin said.

The two companies are reportedly also interested in the gaming business, according to stories in the Chinese-language press earlier this week.
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