With the recent debut of its first pocket TV, Micro-Star International Co (微星科技), the nation's No. 3 motherboard maker, is hoping to boost its visibility in the consumer electronics market.
"The World Cup craze is sweeping Europe and we hope to tap into this opportunity by offering our first pocket TV," Vincent Lai (
The company's pocket TV "D310" uses the Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial (DVB-T) digital TV standard. The unit made its debut at last week's Computex Taipei.
With a price tag of NT$7,990 and bundled with a free 1GB memory card, the D310 has a 4.2-inch liquid-crystal-display (LCD) screen, built-in TV antenna and weighs 180g.
Local consumers will be able to watch digital TV broadcast on 15 channels on the gadget, as well as view photos, videos and listen to MP3 files.
The company, however, is considering adding a hard drive to future models to offer more of a selection.
In a bid to diversify its business portfolio, Micro-Star entered the consumer electronics segment in 2003 with MP3 players, portable media players as well as Bluetooth and wireless gadgets.
Consumer electronics and notebooks will contribute 40 percent of total company revenues this year, up from just 15 percent last year, Lai said.
Motherboards and graphics cards will account for 50 percent this year, whereas barebone systems and servers will contribute around 10 percent, he said.
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