Monica Chen, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMESAsustek Computer is planning to drop prices of some Eee PC models in order to meet its annual shipments goal of five million units and to clear inventory of some older models. HP and Acer have also dropped their netbook prices.
Asustek's 7-inch Eee PC has maintained its price at NT$7,990 (US$243.63) in the channel, however the model is still mainly shipped to telecom service providers and the company expects to ship another 200,000 units before the end of this year.
The Eee PC 901 has seen its price adjusted from NT$16,900 to NT$12,900 while the Intel Celeron M processor-based Eee PC 900 has already been phased out of the market. The Celeron M-based Eee PC 1000HD has seen its price drop to NT$13,980. and prices for both the Eee PC 904 and 1000H have fallen around NT$1,000.
HP has cut the price of its 2133 Mini-note by around NT$2,000, while Acer's Aspire one has gone down around NT$1,000.
Dell Sees Future in Services
Despite the pressures of the economic downturn and caution among most of its customers, Dell continues to see opportunity in its enterprise infrastructure and service business, Senior VP
Paul Bell said at the Dreamforce conference today. He noted that Web 2.0, social-networking companies and other firms that are adding users need to scale up and are continuing to spend on infrastructure services, while financial services companies are trying to find ways to tighten analytics while paring down extraneous costs.
Bell said reports the company would shrink its manufacturing operations were speculation. But he said Dell’s ongoing move into providing infrastructure as a service is part of a business direction that will cut back on the more labor-intensive service model of the past, in favor of, for example, the remote support services the company now offers.
While the consumer market still accounts for just 15 percent of the company’s revenue, Bell said its existing laptop personalization features are going to expand to allow “true individualization” of the outside of laptops, but he wouldn’t give specifics. He hinted at other areas the company was looking at in PC personalization but didn’t give details, and he also declined to comment on the likelihood of a Dell phone.
But Bell did say the company doesn’t buy into the idea that consumers want complete convergence of Internet devices. Handheld and laptop devices won’t end up as one device everyone uses, he said, and the company is testing out whether netbooks in developed markets will end up complementing rather than replacing fullsize PCs. For now, that means the company is focused on larger screens and keybords rather than smaller devices.
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