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Asustek announces it plans to launch a tablet PC in June

Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦), the world's largest motherboard manufacturer and a major notebook computer maker, plans to roll out its first tablet PC in June, a company official said yesterday.

"We gather from client feedback that there is demand for tablet PCs, especially in the medical, insurance and education sectors," Asustek's sales director Kevin Lin (林福能) said in a telephone interview.

Operating on Microsoft Corp's Tablet PC operating system (OS), tablet PCs have a convertible panel display and are able to convert handwriting and voice to text, allowing users to make notes like traditional pen and paper.

The first tablet PC was introduced in Taiwan four years ago, but the company decided not to jump into the market at the time as its research scale was smaller, he said.

However, as Asustek's economic scale has gradually increased over the past few years, while research and procurement costs have dropped, it is time for the company to establish a foothold in this market, Lin said.

Asustek's product will come with a 13-inch screen, employ two hard drives and feature fingerprint authentication.

"Compared to the common 12-inch tablet PCs, our product offers a better viewing experience and weighs less than 2kg," he said. "It definitely has a selling point."

Locally, the company hopes to sell around 1,000 units of the convertible laptops per month, at an estimated price of more than NT$50,000 (US$1,563), Lin added.

According to research firm Gartner Inc, the tablet PC market is growing slowly but steadily, and the device will not become mainstream until next year.

Meanwhile, Acer Inc, the world's No. 3 supplier of personal computers, is no longer betting on tablet PCs to boost computer sales.

"Though we have been maintaining sales of tablet PCs, we will not dedicate more development or marketing resources to the product line," an Acer official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Currently, Acer is selling its C200 series tablet PCs in the local market, priced at a hefty NT$62,900.

Mainstream notebooks retail for around NT$40,000.

"Volumes are small for tablet PCs, so we can't expect pricing to come down," the official said.

Acer -- which was one of the first hardware vendors to partner with Microsoft to launch tablet PCs in November 2002 -- has seen sales hovering at an negligible percentage in recent years, he said.

Sales peaked in 2003, when they surpassed 10 percent of overall notebook sales, because of heavy promotion and marketing campaigns, the official said.

However, the launch of Microsoft's Windows Vista OS early next year might help raise market acceptance, as its handwriting recognition feature supports tablet PCs.

This will save users the hassle of switching between the general Windows OS and the Tablet PC OS, he said.
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