DigiHunter

Viliv S5 succeeds, but UMID Mbook M1 fails in its first step

Feb 25, 2009 22:34

Korean MIDs have started to launch in Korea, with the first out being TG's Lluon Mobbit which is officially available now in the market and UMID's Mbook M1 which last week started taking pre-orders with 500 sets offered only. In addition, there is Vilivls S5 pre-order yesterday with just 1,000 sets to be had.

TG's LLuon Mobbit seems very quiet at the moment even though it's officially available. I assume many potential customers like to compare this with other two upcoming MIDs from UMID and Viliv, since their hardware specs are nearly the same except for the form factors. Just like the Netbook, they have the same hardware, so design makes a difference. Even the prices of the three MIDs released are similar.

It seems Viliv S5 is the first-round winner among the three Korean MIDs here since TG is silent in those communities and UMID has recalled its pre-ordered products due to quality issues in the product finish.






Credit: CaToGTS 

UMID started taking pre-orders from February 13 and those 500 sets are still not sold out with the early delivered sets facing quality problems with the finish. UMID has announced that all pre-ordered sets will be replaced after it's revised the mold base.

UMID M1 was the best MID to be spotlighted at the CES 2009 and it's the first Korean MID to be released with Linux OS here in Korea. But this OS selection and the measly 512MB RAM may be causing customers to think twice about getting this even though it's one of the best MIDs on the market now, and probably one of the lowest launch prices out there compared to the other competitors here, I reckon.

What about the Viliv S5? Viliv started taking pre-orders from February 24, with 1,000 sets available only, but those 1,000 sets were all sold out in one day. Nope, make that in about 8 hours. Viliv prepared three models--F-log, I-Log and S-log--with different hardware specs for the low, mid and high range. Three hundred S-log units, which have the highest specs, were sold out in 15 minutes.

Viliv, better known as a PMP manufacture in Korea and a top four to five market share holder, used one of its PMP designs, so product quality is very stable and great, and most of the accessories are already available and compatible with the S5. So for the S5, there's no need to wait for accessories even though the MID is very new in the market.

The MID market is slowly opening up in Korea with those first three forerunners, and we may find a winner yet. Let's see how UMID performs once it's back on track after fixing the quality issues.

And what's happening to TG's LLuon Mobbit? TG is the leading desktop PC giant here, so come on, your MIDs are too quiet already. Get back into the game!




Who is the winner of 'pocket PC' AD here?

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