Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co Taiwan Branch intends to increase the number of staff at its Product Development Center (PDC) by 50 percent before the end of next year, in line with the center's expanding scale, company executives said yesterday.
"We plan to increase our numbers to 240 staff at the center by next year," said Ted Clark, HP senior vice president and general manager of the mobile computing unit, who flew to Taipei to attend the center's third anniversary celebration yesterday.
Set up in September 2002 with 24 employees, the center has now expanded to 160 staff. Of this, local hires account for 75 percent, an increase from 12.5 percent three years ago, HP said.
As one of HP's global PDCs, the center aims to integrate suppliers directly in the product design process and develop products together to meet the needs of markets in different regions. Analysts said the center has also helped cement supply-chain relationships between local contractors and HP.
HP's major local original design manufacturing (ODM) partners include top notebook assemblers Quanta Computer Inc (
The center has managed to slash the product development cycle for consumer notebooks to between six and nine months from the previous 12 months, said Jessica Chong (
The center, which started off by developing consumer notebooks, industrial standard servers and commercial laptops, has added handheld devices and consumer desktops to its operations in the last two years.
"The consumer laptop business is the largest revenue contributor among other product lines in the PDC," Chong said.
She refused to give a breakdown of numbers.
All of its Pavilion and Presario consumer notebook brands are developed entirely in Taiwan, marking the significance of the center in HP's consumer notebook segment, she said.
Over the past three years, 50 new products and 36 notebook platforms were churned out by the center.
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