Asian PC Makers Turn to U.S. Market
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Asian computer makers like Acer, Asustek, and Lenovo are aggressively courting U.S. consumers with high-end laptops.
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Infotech spending by small and medium businesses (1-999 employees) is on  track to reach a whopping US$95 billion this year across the  Asia-Pacific region outside of Japan, with three key countries--China,  South Korea and Australia--leading the pack.
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By George Hsu  Taiwan stocks, laggards in Asia since 2001, could catch up with regional markets next year as new products spur demand for video game consoles, computers and semiconductors.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ introduced an entry-level rack server in India on Thursday, part of its strategy to design lower-cost servers specifically for Asian countries. Asia has high growth markets like China and India, but the needs and usage models of customers there are different from those elsewhere in the world, Paul Miller, HPâs vice president of marketing for Industry Standard Servers (ISS) and BladeSystems, told reporters in Bangalore on Thursday. A large proportion of customers in Asia, including smaller businesses, don't need all the features included with HP servers sold in other regions, said Tony Parkinson, HPâs vice president and general manager for ISS in the Asia Pacific. âCustomers in Asia want a âgood enoughâ product which is reliable, good quality, good brand, and not very expensiveâ, he said. The new server, the ProLiant DL180, is based on Dual Core and Quad-Core Xeon processors from Intel and priced from 100,000 Indian rupees, or about $2,500. HP said the servers will help Asian businesses to migrate from tower servers to rack servers, by offering the efficiency of a rack server and the economics of a tower server. Users in Asia often stuff tower servers into racks because of space constraints, but have not migrated to rack servers because of their higher costs, Miller said. Some of the features and components, included as standard on similar HP rack servers, are offered as options on the DL180 to drive down costs, said Kevin Van Mondfrans, HPâs manager of product marketing for ISS. For example, while Asian customers want basic management capabilities, they don't see a need for the more sophisticated management software typically offered on these servers, he said. Usage models also differ in Asia, according to HP. The DL180 is likely to be used as a standalone storage server in Asia, while customers in the U.S. tend to use such systems as part of a storage area network (SAN), Parkinson said. The products for Asia are being designed at an HP ProLiant design center in Taiwan. Asia is the only region the company is designing special products for, Miller said. However, some of the products for Asia may be offered later in other developing markets, such as Latin America and Russia, he said. The ProLiant ML115, introduced in March as a tower server at the cost of a desktop, was designed for Asia but eventually introduced in other parts of the world. HP will offer customers in Asia a mix of Asia-specific products and standard products, as some Asian customers, such as large enterprises, want the full-featured products, Parkinson said. He did not say how many more servers HP is designing exclusively for the region.
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MacCentral - The PC industry is doing a better job of satisfying its U.S. customers than in recent years, and improvements to technical support seem to have done the trick, according to the results of a study released Tuesday by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
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(InfoWorld) - Shares of Asian PC makers are finally shaking off their summer doldrums as back-to-school sales give them a boost and the upcoming launch of Microsoft's new Vista OS improves their longer term prospects. A buying binge on stock of Taiwanese PC maker Acer started early this week after it was upgraded by Merrill Lynch & Co.Â and a few other large investment banks. The firms noted that after sluggish sales in the first half of the year,Â demand for PCs is on the rise. TheÂ microprocessor price warÂ between Intel and Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD) saw the price on some desktop chips halved, lifting PC demand, analysts say. Microsoft's new OS is expected to come out on time and give the PC market an additional long term boost. "The PC replacement cycle should take place gradually following Microsoftâs launch of its new operating system, Vista, in the first half of 2007," said Daniel Chang, computer industry analyst at Macquarie Research Equities, in a report on Thursday. Acer's shares were also boosted this week after it reported a better-than-expected 36 percent increase in second quarter net profit to NT$3.08 billion (US$93.59 million). It's shares ended up 25 percent for the week, at NT$53.5, on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Acer's main rival in Asia, Lenovo Group, also saw its stock rise. The company'sÂ U.S.-listed shares increasedÂ 11.2 percent to US$8.45 for this week, as of its close on Thursday. By comparison, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have been laggards. Dell shares are up 3.9 percent so far this week to end at US$22.60 on Thursday, while HP had gained 3.8 percent to US$36.56 over the same time. One reason for the difference in share performance is that Acer and Lenovo stock fell further this year than their U.S. rivals due to PC market concerns andÂ company-specific issues, analysts say, so it's no surprise the rebound has lifted them higher. Another reason Dell and HP have underperformed their Asian peers recently is because U.S. investors are concerned about the economy, including consumer demand and the likelihood of further interest rate increases. Although very little conclusive data is out for U.S. PC sales right now, analysts say demand in Asia is strong, and Europe is heating up. Henry King, executive director of technology research for Goldman Sachs (Asia), noted in a report on Wednesday that strong PC component demand in Europe over the past few weeks should help allay concerns over possible U.S. weakness. "Besides, we expect more Europeans to come back from summer vacations in the next few weeks, so sell thru data is likely to continue to trend up in September," King said. Another factor hurting shares of PC makers this year has been cutthroat price competition. But stronger market demand should ease price competition, analysts say, as should lower costs for microprocessors. In short, the seasonal demand from back-to-school and back-from-vacation sales going on now should extend for quite a while as users continue buying when Vista launches. The strong, steady demand should allow PC makers to charge reasonable prices, increasing their profit margins and making investors happy.
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The Taiwanese PC maker has been growing fast. With Gateway, it gets a bigger foothold on U.S. soil.
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PC vendors will offer bargains to people living overseas, while U.S. consumers won't feel much of a pinch.
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Dell Inc. expects shipments of personal computers, notebooks, and servers in Asia excluding China, Japan, and South Korea to grow almost 20 percent in 2007, a company executive said yesterday.
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InfoWorld - Dell is seeing strong demand for its products in several Asian markets and is pleased with customer acceptance of Microsoft&#39;s&#160;new Windows Vista operating system, according to one of the computer manufacturer&#39;s senior executives in the region.
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Acer, the world&#39;s third largest PC vendor, said Friday that it is keeping an eye on a labor shortage in China that could affect PC production.&quot;There is a labor shortage in China, which is new to me,&quot; said J.T. Wang, chairman of Acer, during the company&#39;s third quarter investors&#39; conference in Taipei. &quot;China has 1.4 billion people, how can they have a labor shortage?&quot; he asked rhetorically.Acer&#39;s China-based component suppliers and PC assemblers have said that in some cases they have lost 1,000 workers overnight, and have had to seek new employees. The Taiwanese company will work with suppliers on new strategies to make sure the issue does not affect production, Wang said.He characterized the concern as small, and unlikely to become a major issue in the near term.There has been a growing shortage of skilled labor in the East coast cities of China, in part due to government efforts to develop the nation&#39;s inland areas, said one analyst. Many factory jobs used to be filled by migrant workers, but now that many companies are building factories in China&#39;s interior, people feel they can stay at home and work instead of traveling to the coast.Acer president Gianfranco Lanci said factories tend to move to new places when production in a certain region becomes difficult, and he expects that will happen if companies continue to see labor shortages in China.A number of electronics firms have started investing in Vietnam. Taiwan&#39;s Hon Hai Precision Industry, the world&#39;s largest contract electronics manufacturer and maker of gadgets including iPods, PlayStation 3 consoles, and Nokia mobile phones, in August announced a&#160;plan to spend $5 billion&#160;over the next five years to build a base of electronic components factories near Vietnam&#39;s capital, Hanoi. Until now, the company&#39;s major investments have all been in China.Taiwan&#39;s Compal Electronics, the world&#39;s second-largest laptop PC maker and another major investor in China, has also announced plans to build a notebook computer factory in Vietnam.Companies have started to look outside of China for new factory investments, the analyst said, and while Vietnam, India, and other countries boast low-cost labor, they will only win investments if their workers are educated and investment incentives and regulations attractive.&#160;
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The chipmaker is upbeat about growth prospects in Asia, but is also watching the economic developments in the U.S.
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The device is part of the Taiwanese computer maker's ongoing attempt to re-establish itself in the U.S. market.
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Both IDC and Gartner reported worldwide shipments of PCs were up strongly in the second quarter, thanks to surge in demand in the Far East and surprisingly brisk sales in the US.
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Taiwanese PC maker purchases struggling American firm in an effort to increase its U.S. market share.
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US industry is increasingly turning to countries like Mexico and China for its manufacturing, and to India for high-end services like computer programming.
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c50346)  has announced the addition of Datamonitor's new report: Computer  Hardware in Japan to their offering.