Acer unveils Aspire EL1600 nettop to tap India's PC market

By Eureka Bharali   |   Thursday, 30 April 2009, 23:15 IST
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Bangalore: Mulling on the opportunities that lie in India, where the PC penetration stands at a meager three percent, Acer, the third largest PC developer, has unveiled its first nettop, Aspire EL1600. "Currently, the nettop occupies five percent of the total computing market and we strive to tap 20 percent of the total consumer desktop sales till July," said WS Mukund, Managing Director, Acer India. Based on the Intel Atom processor 230, the nettop aims at the first time users and the government projects. It is priced at 12,000 without the inclusion of a monitor and an operating system. "The company is in talks with Microsoft to integrate the Windows based operating system with the nettop," said S Rajendran, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Acer India. The company claims that the product can enable 30 percent of power saving with a small form factor of 8.5 liters and the 45 nm processors from Intel. The nettops as a whole is expected to grow to more than six million units in 2009, and to over seven million in 2010 globally, according to DisplaySearch. "Amongst the current players in India, HCL, Lenovo and HP comprise of 25 percent of the total nettop market, with the rest of the 75 percent captured by a local assembler," said Rajendran. As a go-to-the-market strategy, the company has targeted the tier-II cities like Cochin, Coimbatore, and Hyderabad. It will further expand its reach to the interior regions, through its 2500 channel partners, consisting of its brand shops, retail partners, system integration partners and master retailers.