The cost of producing slim laptops will continue to go down as more local companies join this line of business, which would lead to a further drop in retail prices, a former Citigroup computer hardware analyst said yesterday.
The acceptable price range for local consumers should fall to between US$300 and US$400 per unit, which is the same as that for high-end mobile phones, Kirk Yang (楊應超), chief financial officer and executive director of Hong Kong-based Ta Yang Group (大洋集團), said in a telephone interview.
Industry watchers have said that growth momentum in the PC sector has shifted to emerging markets like India, China and eastern Europe in recent years as growth in the US, Japan and western Europe slowed down.
However, because household incomes in emerging countries tend to be lower than in developed countries, price becomes a major concern for consumers in those countries, Yang said.
His comments came at a time when a number of so-called low-cost PCs are on display at the Computex trade show in Taipei. Exhibitors view the low-cost laptops as a second household PC and are promoting them among students and office workers.
Eyeing the growing low-cost laptop market, local motherboard manufacturers Gigabyte Technology Co (技嘉科技) and Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星科技) unveiled their latest compact notebook computers, priced between NT$15,900 and NT$19,900, at the annual Computex show.
“Thanks to Asustek Computer Inc (華碩電腦) opening up the door with their successful Eee PC series last year, MSI sees more opportunities for improvement,” an MSI official speaking on condition of anonymity said at the show yesterday.
Asustek, the world’s largest motherboard maker, launched its first low-cost notebook computer, the Eee PC, in October last year and reported sales of 350,000 units in two-and-a-half months.
MSI’s low-cost laptop, the Wind (Wi-Fi network device) Notebook U100, provides a bigger keyboard, with keys spaced at 17.5mm, she said.
The U100, which will begin mass production at the end of this month, is equipped with a 10-inch liquid-crystal-display (LCD) panel and a resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels. The model is 26cm in length 18cm wide and weighs 1kg.
Vincent Lai (賴玉琳), assistant vice president of MSI’s marketing department, said the company aimed to sell 400,000 units of the U100 model this year, which would account for between 15 percent and 20 percent of MSI’s target shipments of nearly 2 million units this year.
Gigabyte’s M912 Netbook, which features a touch screen and a swivel display, is equipped with an 8.9-inch LCD panel with a resolution of 1,280 x 768. The model, which will be appearing on shelves either late this month or early next month, will be available in five different colors.
Prices of the M912 Netbook will range from NT$15,900 for Linux, to NT$19,900 for models with Microsoft Windows Vista compliance.
Gigabyte expects to sell between 9,000 and 15,000 M912 Netbooks this year, which would account for 25 percent of the company’s annual laptop sales.
“However, whether Gigabyte will be able to achieve our target will depend upon the battery shortage problem, which is expected to persist this quarter,” said Percy Lo (羅叔欣), a project management supervisor at Gigabyte.
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