14 DAY TRIAL // Acer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP) are expected to each focus their notebook PC marketing this year on targeting the market share currently held by IBM, according to sources at Taiwan notebook makers.
Acer's notebook shipments to the US market increased seven-fold, on-year, in the fourth quarter of last year, pushing Acer's total shipments to 1.3 million units in the October-December period, said the sources.
Acer is likely to leverage its fourth-quarter success to further boost its sales in the US and, of course, at the expense of IBM, the sources asserted.
Meanwhile, HP in Taiwan has launched a series of promotional campaigns; aiming to "remove IBM from the (Taiwan) market," while claiming that HP notebooks are the product brand "truly originating from the US," according to reports in local newspapers.
In addition, Dell plans to add to its lineup of 12.1-inch notebooks, including a standard model for the US market and a low-voltage, ultra-thin model for business clients in the Asia-Pacific region. The introduction of additional 12.1-inch models is aimed to take on IBM's X-series ThinkPad lineup, the sources said.
In a promotional letter from Dell to business clients in Taiwan, the US vendor even claimed, "IBM has gone," according to a December 31 report in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News.