Oct. 20, 2000

Dell Computer Corp. of the U.S. estimates its procurement from Taiwan of desktop and notebook PCs will exceed 20 billion Taiwan dollars within 3 years. The bank rate at the moment floats around 32 to the US dollar.

Geoffrey Healy, sales director of the firm, said that Dell will purchase high profit information technology produts such as workstations, servers, and storage equipment from Taiwan in the future. Dell will transfer its server production lines to OEM partners in Taiwan by the end of this year or early 2001.Taiwan expects to become an important server production base for Dell sooon, Healy said.

Sharing Healy's view, Sung Chen-yu, president of Dell's Taiwan branch said that after desktop and notebook PCs, Taiwan server makers are expected to become the next important cooperation partners of Dell in servers and related products. He predicted that the world's server sales would total seven million units within five years, adding that the establishment of Internet data centers and application service providers will pave the way for increasing market demand in server products in Taiwan.

Dell purchased products worth 4.1 billion Taiwan dollars in 1999. Presently, the company has OEM ties with Quanta Computer Inc. for notebook PCs, Compal Electronic Inc. for monitors and Wyse Taiwan Inc. for thin client PCs. Acer also supplies desktop PCs for Dell afer IBM suspended its OEM tie with Acer recently.