General manager Alan Chiang said Acer would focus its marketing on the three categories and expects to have shipped 353,767 units to Thailand by the year end. These will include 148,151 desktops, 204,542 notebooks and 1,074 servers.

The Thai PC market is expected to total 1.525 million units this year.

The company will target both the high-end and entry-levels of the market, Chiang said. It also plans to refresh its retail outlets by launching its "pearl shop" concept, which is intended to offer an "edutainment performance of advanced technology and luxury".

"Acer plans to refresh 20 of its 50 retail shops around the country in the first year," Chiang said.

In the LCD monitor market, the firm expects to sell 200,000 units, about 40 per cent of the total. To attract new customers, it will offer different product designs at affordable prices.

In the first half of the year, the firm sold 155,153 PC units, including 90,086 notebooks, 64,722 desktops and 345 servers. The figures represented sales growth of about 53 per cent over the same period last year.

In the first quarter, Acer sold 71,945 PC units for a 19.8-per-cent share of the total market of 363,935. It also supplied 12.2 per cent of the desktop PCs, 37.6 per cent of the notebooks and 2.9 per cent of the servers.

Chiang said that in the first half of this year, the market was influenced by the economic slow-down, delays in investment for the mega-projects and international investment generally, political instability, high fuel prices, high inflation and high interest rates.

Jirapan Boonnoon

The Nation