IBM Taiwan Corp hopes to get Taiwanese youth hooked on cheaper entry-level PCs and thereby build long-term brand loyalty, an executive of the company said yesterday.
"More than 80 percent of IBM notebook users are quite brand-loyal and prefer to purchase IBM when they upgrade to their second computers, so we want to get them hooked right from the start," said Hank Hung (洪漢青), a PC division executive at IBM Taiwan.
To make the strategy a reality, the company has slashed prices on its entry-level notebooks, normally priced well above NT$50,000.
Street prices of the IBM ThinkPad KT1 notebooks, powered by the Intel Corp's Celeron 1.13 GHz processor and equipped with a 13.3-inch monitor and DVD player are going for a thin NT$39,999. Similar models with 14.1-inch monitors are priced at NT$42,999.
According to a recent local tech magazine survey, nearly 37 percent of Taiwanese prefer IBM as their first notebook brand of choice, while actual sales are a mere 13 percent nationwide. The discrepency between the two figures lead IBM to rethink its pricing "because most entry-level users are young people that just can't afford our premium products," Hung explained.
IBM reconfigured its entry-level laptop and started promoting them earlier this month at the Taipei Computer Application Show.
"The market reaction was impressive and we received some 400 orders at the show alone," Hung said.
Meanwhile, one market professional said homegrown Acer Inc (
"Acer notebooks that fall in the NT$40,000 range always enjoy good sales," said David Wang (王宇晨), general manager at iDepo (數碼倉庫).
According to Wang, for the first half of this year, Asustek Computer Inc (
Seeking to counter the IBM market offensive, Acer quickly rushed its secret weapon to store shelves.
"Earlier this week, we launched a new entry-level notebook priced at NT$37,900," said Campbell Kan (甘博隆), a chief product officer at Acer.
This new model, Acer Travelmate 223, is powered by the same Intel Celeron1.13 GHz processor and integrated with a 14-inch monitor and a DVD player.
"We offer equipment similar to the IBM ThinkPad KTII, while the price is NT$5,000 cheaper," Kan stressed.
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