Oct 15, 2001

MiTac International Corp. is increasing capital investment in China to set up a news company in Shanghai as a global personal computer maintenance center. It also plans to promote sales of its PCs under a new English language brand name.

A top executive said that MiTac sold 10 million PCs last year, accounting for a 7% world market share. With a 3% maintenance rate, about 300,000 PCs it sold will need repairs each year.

The maintenance fee for each PC now stands at US$75. But MiTac's global PC maintenance center could offer the service at a rate of only US$5 each set while needing only US$1 of transport costs. According to the project, MiTac will be able to improve services to customers by repairing one million PCs a year.

MiTac will also start installing manufacturing equipment early next year at the group's second PC manufacturing center in the mainland at Kunshan near Shanghai. By integrating the manufacturing and maintenance centers, MiTac aspires to grow into the world’s largest manufacturing and marketing group for desktop PCs in the world.

Executives said it will be easier to draw adequate talents and workers to the new industrial center because Shanghai has unbeatable magnetic power to lure people from all around the mainland to work in the modern industrial and commercial metropolis.

In line with the access o the World Trade Organization (WT) by both Taiwan and China, MiTac plans to give a new promotion push to its PCs on the fast growing market in the mainland. Executives decided not to use the well-known "MiTAC" in the campaign to avoid conflict of interest of its international marketing agents.

But instead ofchooing a Chinese-language brand name, MiTac is very likely to use a new brand name on the market. There are reports, according to local newspapers, that the MiTac Group is inclined to adopting "GiTAC" as a new brand name, but executives said they had not made a final decision yet.