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Acer lands in Korea with the market's No. 1 Netbook Aspire series

Aug 16, 2009 19:33

Acer is back in Korea with its world-leading Netbook series of Aspires. Surprised? This is Acer's second attempt at the Korean market. The Taiwan company wasn't successful in its first outing against local PC brands such as TG Sambo and Samsung, not to mention that its brand name still isn't familiar to Koreans as a Taiwan PC brand with low prices. After a few years of operation, Acer left Korea in 2001, driven by poor sales results.

Now that it's been a global top brand for the past few years and the No. 1 world title holder for Netbooks, one of hottest PC product categories of late, Koreans have started to look for and question why Acer isn't re-entering Korea with its powerful lineup of PCs.

Well, Acer has responded and announced that it is returning to Korea with the Aspire Netbook series in September 2009. However, this doesn't mean that the company is settin gup a brand office and dealing directly with Korean customers like in other markets. Acer has selected a local distributor as a partner to roll out Acer products in Korea, with the customer service to be handled by another company in the country. These two local partners will be controlled by Acer's Japan branch. (Anyone know about Acer's performance in Japan?)



It looks like Korea's Netbook market will get more active with these newcomers giving the local giants a run for their money. Currently, Samsung holds the No. 1 market share with LG, with TG following suit as second tier, and Asus, MSI, HP, Dell and Sony as third tiers. A local research firm reported that about 300,000 Netbooks have been sold in the first quarter, which leads us to assume that 1.2 million units will be sold in 2009. I don't think this is an attractive market size for this newcomer, but Acer probably sees this as its last chance to hit the Korean market since it has one of the best Netbook lines compared with others and this has been proved to be so in many other markets.

Who else will join this competition? Lenovo has also announced that its IdeaPad will be introduced in Korea by September. Sony Korea has released a new Netbook called the Vaio W series with a midrange price compare with its premium minilaptop called the Vaio P, in order to expand market share. HP hasn't been silent, either. It has been teaming up with Homeplus which is one of the largest retail chains, to introduce a new Mini 110 series with a very attractive price for customers.

The Netbook competition is getting tougher by the day. Netbook hardware specifications are getting better and better, and now we have 11.1-inch LCD screens and graphics performance have also been integrated to cover some of the 3D support, too. Most importantly, price remains low. This is a good thing for consumers, but it may not be a great move for PC manufacturers and chip makers since the Netbook and Atom aren't their best profitable models among the entire product line.

Let's see how those newcomers will act in Korea and appeal to Korean customers. Koreans have quite a strong following for local brands like Samsung and LG (now world-famous brands) because of their product qualities and aftersales services. Customer service is especially a headache and issue for most global brands doing business in Korea. Unfortunately, none of those global brands have a nationwide service network to compete with local brands like Samsung and LG and this may hold the former back.

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