New York Yankees pitcher Wang Chien-ming (
A convenience store chain recently released a limited edition stamp collection featuring Wang, while an automobile vendor also announced last week that it has signed Wang up to be its charity spokesman.
And technology firms are not missing out on the Wang phenomenon either.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, AP
Acer Inc, the world's fourth-largest personal computer maker, unveiled last Wednesday a notebook computer model tailor-made for Wang fans.
"Wang and Acer are both from Taiwan, and each has made a name internationally," Acer's chairman Wang Jeng-tang (
Wang depicts the spirit of "aggressiveness, sporty physique and masculinity," and is always gearing up for world-class competitions -- similar characteristics to Acer's image, he said.
The PC maker first signed up Wang in July last year to represent its notebook computer products in Taiwan and has renewed the contract through to next June.
Wang was paid NT$10 million (US$309,023) last year to lend his name to the Acer brand, and that sum increased an additional 10 percent this year.
"We compete closely with Asustek in Taiwan, and this time, we outdid it in marketing with the right bet on Wang," Wang Jeng-tang said.
With Wang speaking for Acer laptops, the company has managed to reach into the pockets of younger users with the average age dropping by 3.7 years, he said.
Sales also increased 10 percent after Wang came on board, he said.
Though Acer outshines Asustek in the world PC market, the company closely trails Asustek Computer Inc (
In the last quarter, Asustek sold 83,527 laptops and had a market share of 36.6 percent, up from 80,609 units and 32 percent in the same period last year, statistics from the International Data Corp Taiwan, a research firm, showed.
In contrast, Acer sold 58,900 portable computers and had a market share of 25.8 percent, down from 80,124 units and 31.8 percent the same period last year.
Acer is now banking on the newly launched Wang notebook to win back market share in the traditionally busy fourth quarter.
Retailing at NT$42,900, the product comes in a dark blue cover and features a standalone graphics card, a 14.1-inch widescreen, a 1.3-megapixel Web camera, a 120 gigabyte hard drive and a 64-bit Core 2 Duo processor.
The computer comes complete with Wang's portrait and autograph on the machine and mouse.
Acer said it will only produce 20,000 of the notebook computers and they will be sold exclusively in Taiwan. The computer is available at the IT Month exhibition, which opened on Saturday at the Taipei World Trade Center and will run through to Sunday. A third of the Wang notebooks have been reserved for sale at the exhibition.
A total of 1,000 Wang laptops had already been sold by the end of the first day of IT Month, the company said.
The company expects all the notebooks to be sold by Lunar New Year, said Scott Lin (
But Asustek said it will not follow in Acer's footsteps to find a spokesman in Taiwan.
There are various factors in finding the perfect model to speak for a brand, and Asustek already enjoys a good reputation here, said Kevin Lin (
"The Wang hype could be short-lived," an analyst said.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
RSS