Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) is narrowing its focus to the traditional notebook market, despite the recent successes of Acer Inc(宏碁)and AsusTek Computer Inc(華碩電腦)with netbooks, a company official said.
“The competition in the netbook sphere is extremely intense. There’s very little margin in that category, and we at HP believe the recent netbook frenzy is due to the back-to-school season, when kids are buying laptops for school,” Clair Chang (張淑雯), manager of HP Taiwan’s product marketing department, said at a media briefing.
“As the market normalizes, we see more and more consumers going back to quality traditional notebooks. And traditional notebooks will be our company focus going forward,” Chang said yesterday as the company introduced a suite of Elitebook-brand models targeted at business users.
Asked about what effect the concentrated strategic move would have on its global sales target this year, Chang said HP’s corporate sales target has not been revised downward, despite the global economic slowdown.
Moreover, she said, HP will continue to be the world’s No. 1 computer vendor this year.
HP plans to release its second generation of Mini-Note models before the end of the year. The company declined to say how many models it expects to ship or what the specifications of the new generation would be.
HP’s new Elitebook series was inspired by aircraft engineering and features a magnesium alloy chassis designed to operate in a variety of working conditions, said Monty Wong (王漢彪), vice president and manager of HP’s personal computing systems group.
Elitebook prices range from NT$65,900 to NT$99,900.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
RSS