Win Me PCs to Debut in Mid-October in Taiwan
September 25, 2000 (TAIPEI) -- Taiwan's computer manufacturers, including Acer Inc., Leo Systems Inc., Asustek Computer Inc., Synnex Tech International Corp. and Twinhead International Corp., have decided to install Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Me operating system in their new computer models.
The first computers equipped with the Win Me operating system will be launched in mid-October, and are expected to gain wide acceptance in December through extensive local publicity.
Following its recent debut, Win Me is understood to have received the warm support of several of the world's biggest computer companies, including IBM Corp., Dell Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. That being the case, local companies have decided to swim with the stream, and successfully obtained licences for Chinese language Win Me from Microsoft at the beginning of September, paving the way for the first shipments of the new computers in mid-October.
The Win Me operating system, seen as the third version of Windows 98, contains reinforced functions in the multimedia and network connection fronts, and is expected to boost sales of several peripheral products, including digital cameras, digital video recorders and scanners.
Microsoft Taiwan has demonstrated its confidence in its new product by publicly announcing that it expects to report sales of 400,000 to 450,000 sets of the Win Me operating software in the first year, with household users accounting for about half of total sales. According to the company's estimate, the market scale of PCs in Taiwan is 1 million to 1.1 million units every year, of which household PCs account for about 50 percent, equivalent to 450,000 to 500,000 units.
A local manufacturer predicted that the Win Me operating system would replace Windows 98 as the operating system of choice for PC manufacturers, after it has the chance to show off its paces in a series of appearances during Taiwan's "information month" in December.
The launch of the Win Me operating system is also expected to encourage demand for dynamic random access memory, as the new operating system requires a larger memory capacity to run.
(Commercial Times, Taiwan) |
