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.
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