Taiwan's Acer Computer will continue its low-price strategy in line with the decline in personal computer prices and in the economy, according to Hong Kong managing director Michael Mak.
While average computer prices had fallen, consumers also were more cautious about spending and were choosing to buy budget PCs, Mr Mak said.
'For example, we see most Hong Kong buyers spent $13,000 on desktop computers last year, but only $10,000 this year,' he said.
The top-seller of home PCs in the SAR, Acer recently branched out into low-cost mini-notebooks. Smaller than a typical sub-notebook PC, the 1.32-kilogram TravelMate 310 costs $13,680, making it cheaper than Japanese rivals such as Toshiba's Libretto 100CT and Sony's Vaio 505G/GX, which cost $15,000 or more.
Most of these other PCs were parallel-imports - sourced directly from overseas rather than through authorised local distributors and, consequently, did not have a local warranty.
Four months ago, Acer launched a low-cost desktop PC for $7,650 - excluding monitor, CD-Rom and modem - using Intel's then just-released Celeron 266 MHz, low-cost microprocessor.