Tatung teams up with US firm Roku for MP3 devices

Tatung Co (大同), a leading home appliance maker in Taiwan, announced yesterday an alliance with the Silicon Valley-based Roku LLC to develop technology and facilitate brand name marketing in a bid to outflank its competitors.

The transnational cooperation underlines the 86-year-old Tatung's ambition to enter the Internet MP3 stereo system market, following the introduction of its built-in hard-disk MP3 products last summer.

"Building a digital family brings opportunities and also challenges. Our cooperation with Roku has been prompted by wanting to be able to upgrade music players, make them applicable to wireless connections and allow users to enjoy the product when in motion," said Lin Kuo Wen-yen (林郭文艷), Tatung's executive vice president, at a press conference yesterday.

Under the alliance, Tatung secures the rights to manufacture and sell Roku's SoundBridge wireless home digital music player, which hit the market last October.

With the dual brand-name strategy, SoundBridge will be marketed under the Roku name in the US and Europe, and under the "Elio" name in Asia.

"Elio" was launched in July last year to cater to younger consumers through a new product line of portable digital devices.

"Tatung possesses strong hardware technologies and manufacturing capabilities that meet world class standards. Combining its capacities and Roku's software development and service integration technology will give us a leading edge in the global market for digital audio video," said Anthony Wood, Roku's founder and chief executive officer.

Wood is the inventor of digital video recording.

In light of rapid changes in the market and fierce competition, Roku expects to build a strategic alliance that will involve original equipment manufacturing (OEM), R&D and marketing, Wood said.

Cooperation with Tatung will start with the manufacturing of SoundBridge and expand into a series of products.

Alan Pan (潘泰吉), general manager of Tatung's multimedia communications division, estimated that by the year's end, Tatung will roll out 100,000 units of SoundBridge. Pan expects the company to double this figure next year.

The wireless music player will hit the local market in September, and then be released in Japan, Southeast Asia and China.

While celebrating the cooperation deal, Pan also acknowledged that worse-than-expected sales of Tatung's "Elio" portable devices had led the company to reconsider its market positioning and introduce new and cheaper models.

Its Photo Jukebox, an MP3 player that can display photos stored from digital cameras, retailed for NT$14,500 when launched last summer. It later introduced two MP3 gadgets, priced at under NT$9,000, in the face of Apple's price war.