Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s top brand notebook maker, yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Chinese PC vendor Founder Group (北大方正集團), aiming to secure a strong foothold in a market where demand for PCs is growing.
“Both parties intend to jointly involve Acer in the planning, development and design of Founder-brand products for more competitive offerings, such as notebooks, netbooks, mobile Internet devices and e-readers,” a statement released by Acer yesterday said.
The signing took place in Beijing yesterday, where top Acer executives, including chairman Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂) and chief executive Gianfranco Lanci, held a global product launch.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
The firms will join forces to tackle the PC market in China.
According to the statement, Founder has comprehensive distribution channels and is strong on marketing PCs in China, especially in rural areas and suburban cities, as well as having a good rapport with corporate and government clients.
“Acer and Founder will be able to build up strong synergy on product offering, supply chain and channel coverage,” the statement said.
More collaboration could be on the cards in the future as both firms are mulling partnerships in the areas of intellectual property rights, supply chain and after-sales services, the statement said.
Founder chief executive Li You (李友) told Sina.com (新浪網) that the partnership would not involve any form of share exchange or merger and that both brands would operate individually, while creating synergies in marketing and technical exchanges.
China contributed 5 percent to Acer’s total revenues in the first quarter, which is the same portion as the corresponding period last year, company data showed.
Wang told investors last month that Acer aims to “break through the bottleneck in China” by dedicating more effort to three aspects of its approach — tailor-made products for the Chinese market, expanding its channel partners and boosting its brand awareness.
Lanci said Acer is targeting doubling revenues in China to US$1.5 billion this year.
Acer also debuted its first e-reader and tablet PC in Beijing yesterday.
A number of content providers have been brought in for the six-inch, 2GB e-reader “LumiRead.”
These include Barnes & Noble Inc of the US, Germany’s Libri.de, as well as Founder. The company said French and Italian readers would be able to read books in their own languages in the near future, thanks to other agreements that are almost ready to be formalized.
Acer also unveiled a touch-screen seven-inch tablet PC that runs on the Android operating system.
In related news, ViewSonic Corp yesterday showcased its “JinYong Reader (金庸機),” an e-reader that works in collaboration with publishing firm Yuan-Liou Publishing Co (遠流出版).
The JinYong Reader comes with all 36 martial arts titles by renowned Hong Kong-based author Louis Cha (查良鏞) — better known as Jin Yong — in electronic format and will be available in Taiwan at the end of next month and in China in the third quarter, Mike Chen (陳正訓), ViewSonic’s senior product development manager, said at a product launch.
With a price tag of about NT$15,000 (US$468), the JinYong Reader will target the world’s 1.5 billion Mandarin speakers, the company said.
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