After almost 18 years of being an Apple Macintosh user, I finally bought my first PC.
I still use my Macs for everyday work, but for games, music and, soon, audiovisual applications, the PC wins hands down. Going through the process of purchasing an Intel machine leads me to conclude that Apple, as well as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, will have a very hard time penetrating the strategic China market for one very important reason - value for yuan.
It was surprising to learn that for less than HK$6,000, I could purchase one of the most powerful PCs available in the market: 2 gigahertz Pentium 4 with 512 megabytes of DDR-Ram, a 64MB Nvidia Ge4 MMX graphics card, 60 gigabyte hard drive, Lan, USB and Firewire ports, Windows XP and a DVD drive. If you just want to run office applications and check your e-mail, a simpler system can be built for about HK$2,500. As much as I like Apple, a comparable Macintosh system would cost double or even triple the PC equivalent.
For Chinese consumers on a limited budget, purchasing a non-branded PC is the only way to meet their computer needs of communication, entertainment and education.
Buying a box with the Dell or HP logo means little to the user who can have a cheaper machine built to order at a local computer store. Even sophisticated users are attracted by generic PCs because the savings will allow them to buy the latest and most powerful cards and components for their dream machines. Aside from laptops, which retain brand power as their miniaturised assembly requires more than general screwdriver and wiring skills, the desktop PC has truly become a commodity.
That leaves just one segment to purchase branded PCs - the business user.