Positivo: The Brazilian Homegrown Computer

The Brazilian retail market sells about any computer you would expect to find in the US. However, department stores across the country boast a different breed of computers that cannot be purchased anywhere but in the country: Positivo.

This computer brand is hardly known outside South-America, but it manages to sell more units per year in Brazil than the top three worldwide retailers (Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sony) combined.

Positivo is a homegrown computer business that practically seized control on the Brazilian IT market. The company sells about more than one million units per year, and some retailers would populate their shelves with Positivo units only.

"Positivo was at the right place at the right time," CEO Helio Rotenberg said. "There are a lot of families that have the desire to buy their first computer and now they can," he continued.

The company's success is mostly due to its comprehensive computer offerings, that are especially tailored to suit the needs of the local market. The Positivo units come with a Media Center PC, called the PCTV, that manages to merge a PC and a TV set in the same device.

Positivo's Rottenberg also claims that his company avoided to follow the US principles in the IT industry, because the US market is driven by high-end computing systems, that come with a bulky price tag. Positivo wishes to be a low-cost computer provider, that can substitute for both a PC and a television set.

The Brazilian system builder is also one of the pioneers of the "family PC" concept, that is suitable for storing accounting and personal finance information as well as for homework or entertainment purposes. "Each part of the family, they are a part of the computer," claimed Rotenberg.

Positivo also plans to deliver complete computing systems even to the lowest economical segment in the country, that can only rely on modest incomes of about $270 per month.