Lenovo Group Ltd (
Laurence Hwang (
Hwang declined to disclose the models and prices Lenovo will bring to Taiwan. But he said the company won't join the price war in the local notebook market, which started in the third quarter last year and saw vendors pushing portable computers priced below NT$20,000.
"The price war is disruptive and not sustainable over the long run," added James Arnold, an executive of Lenovo's Taiwan branch, who oversees brand and marketing activities.
Instead, Lenovo's products will come in stylish exterior designs and latest industry specifications to tempt consumers into buying these brand-new products, he added.
To further differentiate from the Think brand -- which includes ThinkPad notebooks and ThinkCenter desktops inherited from IBM Corp's ailing PC unit in May last year -- the Lenovo brand will be geared toward the consumer segment rather than mid- and large-sized enterprises, according to Arnold.
Shares of Lenovo, however, fell yesterday in Hong Kong on concern the company's marketing costs will rise as it promotes its own-brand products. Its stock closed 2.3 percent lower at HK$3.25.
Since local consumers are price sensitive, technologically savvy, and often shun products made by Chinese vendors, Lenovo may have a tough road ahead, said Amy Teng (
It is a prerequisite for Lenovo to attract consumers by offering competitively-priced products such as those from Asustek Computer Inc (
"However, I don't expect Lenovo to slash prices to make the products very low-end in their debut, since this would damage its brand image," she added.
As Lenovo is just testing the waters in the second quarter this year, the real test of its performance and market acceptance will be in the third quarter, which traditionally is the peak selling season, she said.
Lenovo increased its global computer shipments to 13.9 million units last year, up from 4.3 million a year earlier, according to the latest preliminary results from ISuppli Corp.
In the fourth quarter, Lenovo's 4.4 million units accounted for 7 percent of global shipments. The company's shipments grew 242 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, the research firm said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained