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Computer manufacturer Acer plans to sell cheap personal
computers to four cities in Central Java, North Sumatra, South Sumatra
and South Sulawesi following the success of its affordable PCs program
early this year.
Working in cooperation with Microsoft and Intel Corporation, Acer will
sell PCs to students and small-scale companies for about Rp 3.3 million
(about US$366) a unit.
In the second phase of the program, which runs from November through
January next year, Acer will promote the discounted PCs in Semarang,
Medan, Palembang, and Makassar, with support from large memory
chip-maker Intel.
The selling price of the PCs under the program is almost half their
normal price of about Rp 7 million and cheaper than locally assembled
PCs with similar specifications that sell for between Rp 4 million and
Rp 4.5 million.
"This is the continuation of Acer's commitment to increase IT literacy
in Indonesia and to help empower students and small and medium
enterprises (SMEs)," Acer Indonesia country manager Jason Lim said
Wednesday.
According to the latest report from the World Intel Economic Forum,
Indonesia's IT literacy remains below other Southeast Asian nations. It
was ranked 51st of 104 countries surveyed behind Malaysia in 27th place
and Thailand, 36.
From April to June, Acer had offered affordable personal computers to
students in three cities in Java, including Bandung, Yogyakarta and
Surabaya in cooperation with software-maker Microsoft.
To support the ongoing program, Microsoft is providing its popular
Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition and Intel contributes the Intel
Pentium 4 to make up Acer's affordable Acer Aspire SA85 desktop package.
"We are confident that with an improved operating system and a better
design, the product will get a higher response from the public," Lim
said.
Acer sold about 4,000 PCs in Bandung, Surabaya and Yogyakarta during
the first three months of the campaign.
"Customers' demand was high and the potential customers expanded beyond
our main target, which was students, reaching up to SMEs," Acer
Indonesia senior marketing communications manager Reinhart Poli said.
Reinhart said the company planned to promote the computers more to
SMEs, which currently made up 50 percent of total sales.
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