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Interview: US Conglomerate Eyes on China's Computer Market
The US conglomerate Gateway, the world's sixth largest personal computer maker, announced Monday, December 18, it has quickened the step to march into China's market as the country's impending accession into the World Trade Organization.
"We have great interest to go into China," Gateway's Asia-Pacific Vice President Graham Long told Xinhua when he made a regular visit to Hong Kong. "We finally built a big plan this August, and now everything is ready."
As the first step, Gateway has so far appointed Piau Phang Foo,a seasoned information technology executive with experience in China's market, as its country manager in China responsible for setting up Gateway's office in Shanghai and for building a team that will drive the company's expansion in China's key cities.
Since its arrival in the Asia-Pacific region, Gateway has expanded to 1,600 staff in six core markets, 42 retail shops, some 100 store-in-store outlets, a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Melaka, plus customer call-centers in Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and Yokohama.
In 1999, sales in the region to consumers, businesses, government offices and schools accounted for about 8 percent of its total worldwide revenue of US$8.6 billion.
"China is a huge opportunity for Gateway," Long said. "If you look at the total market size in China in the year 2004 and 2005, it is the biggest market in the Asia-Pacific region, even bigger than Japan," he said.
Long was confident of the company's expansion of its drive in China, particularly in the growth consumer area and in small and medium-size businesses. This is because Gateway is a company that got a lot of strength in the area of bringing in technology solutions to consumers and small and medium-sized businesses, he said.
Long said consumers and small businesses in China are becoming much more aware of the value of technology and more and more Chinese have a desire to experiencing how to use technology to better the life of themselves and better the life of their children. "This is what we have focused on," he added.
"In the China's market, we are the last, but not the least," Long said. "Despite the disadvantage that the brand name is not known in China, Gateway has indeed the advantage that we know the mistakes that our rivals have made," he explained.
According to Long, Gateway is the No. 1 consumer brand and computer training company in the United States, other than universities. Long believed as China's consumers become much more educated and knowledgeable, the experiences in the United States are useful for the Chinese.
"We also have the major advances in the area of providing networking in homes and businesses and bringing in Internet appliances based on telephone lines and televisions, and we just want bring into China this whole wealth of technology," Long said.
Clearly, in the consumer area in China, there are many challenges, Long admitted. He said Gateway has very well recognized the difficulties in competing in the retail environment with Legend, the largest computer company in the Asia-Pacific region.
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