Culturecom seeks partner for venture in home PCs

The fledgling IT firm hopes to make budget units for mainland customers

Comic book publisher turned information-technology firm Culturecom Holdings is hoping budget computers priced for the mainland home-user market can help it recoup a HK$300 million investment in a new chip product.

Chairman Cheung Wai-tung said Culturecom was in talks with mainland companies to co-operate on the production of low-price motherboards powered by the Via Dragon SCS 3210 CPU, a single-chip Chinese central processing unit jointly developed with IBM Corp.

'Once we complete testing of the motherboard we can start producing it and people can use it to make low-price computers costing as little as HK$2,000 to $3,000, less than half the price of most of the PCs on the market,' Mr Cheung said.

He said the CPU and motherboard were the major costs in making personal computers.

'In China, there are about 33 million to 35 million PC units, but only about 20 per cent are home PCs. The low penetration rate of home computers in China is because most people can't afford them,' Mr Cheung said. 'If we can sell PCs at HK$2,000 to $3,000, a lot of people will be able to buy them.'