14 DAY TRIAL // There are various IT stores all around the world, and that goes for Asia as much as it does for everywhere else, although the US, Europe and Japan take the cake.
Still, such places don't necessarily help companies' stores as much as they would like, nor does it increase brand awareness.
Seeking to promote their products and amass more customers and, thus, profits, Lenovo and HP are thinking of doing something about it.
At least, this is what a recent report from Digitimes says, and we have no great reason to disbelieve it.
What the two corporations will do is open their own brand stores in Taiwan and the rest of the Asia Pacific region.
The actual jump in the number of such stores is going to be tremendous in fact.
To put things in perspective, Lenovo has only five own-brand stores in Taiwan, almost all of them in Taipei and Kaohsiung, the country's major metropolises.
The IT company aims to bring that number to 1,000. Granted, not all of those will be in Taiwan, but the leap is huge anyway.
Meanwhile, HP is setting up a full-service center in Taipei, and combining product maintenance service with product exhibition in one location. More stores will appear over time.
The report mentions that Apple probably inspired this new tactic, after its Apple Store revenues grew by 42.6% on year in the last quarter of 2011.
We suppose it's an innocent enough assumption to make, although we guess HP and Lenovo would have decided to expand their store channels anyway, if not now then eventually.
After all, what is important is that the largest maker of PCs (HP) and the fastest growing PC maker (Lenovo) are both thinking along the same lines. Considering that Lenovo clearly said it was gunning for the top spot, it makes complete sense to see the rivalry progress along these lines.