Buyers want quality products not low prices

Buyers want quality products not low prices

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

Oops, I did it again. I thought about rechecking what GIS
exactly stood for when I was writing last week's article, but I
never had the chance to do so as the final deadline for
submitting the article had already arrived. So, I incorrectly
wrote "Geological Information System". A reader, Mr. Erik van der
Zee, who is himself a geo-information consultant, was kind enough
to point out that it should have been "Geographical Information
System".

I should have known it by heart, because my own nephew is
actually one of those people in charge of the GIS that the
municipal government of Jakarta has built. I really thank Mr. van
der Zee for the correction. As usual, I truly appreciate any
feedback and corrections that readers can give me.

And here is another tip that I also forgot to share with you,
which Mr. van der Zee reminded me of as well. If we need to look
for a better synonym for a word that we have already typed, we
can place the cursor inside the word and just hit Shift +F7 to
quickly call up the built-in thesaurus in Microsoft Word. Again,
a lot of thanks go to him for this.

Benq: A Reincarnation.

A new brand has now arrived from Taiwan. You may still recall
that, a couple of years ago, Acer, the electronics giant from
this industrial marvel, made a serious attempt to increase its
share of the global market through products such as cell phones,
keyboards, scanners, CD burners, video projectors, etc. Acer
collaborated with a number of innovative companies around the
world to come up with new devices and tools that consumers might
want and need. After some time, it turned out that Acer did not
get very far with its products, mostly because of problems with
product quality.

Recently, Acer made a renewed attempt, but this time through
an independent company within its group. In the re-branding
program, Acer Communication and Multimedia changed its name to
Benq. At last month's launch event at the Grand Hyatt, Jakarta,
local consumers and IT reporters were able to look at some of its
initial digital consumer products.

As of today, Benq offers 22 products in categories such as
display, storage, imaging, broadband and wireless. Surprisingly,
the company has already collected 670 global patent rights, which
is quite a promising performance. Personally, however, I think
Benq has so far done a good job on the design side but still has
a long way to go in applying the latest technological
breakthroughs. The real strength of their products will still
have to be proven over time.

In the display category, for example, Benq has a series of LCD
screens in 14, 15, 17 and 18-inch formats. The Acer FP581, for
example, has quite a stunning design. Its tilt and swivel base,
which can be folded, can also function as the handle if you want
to tote the monitor around. Unfortunately, it seems that Benq
still has some work to do on the specifications. The 75/75 and
70/70 degree viewing angles are a little bit behind the industry
standard, which now touts at least a 160-degree horizontal and
vertical viewing angle, for example. Its pixel pitch, which is
0.281 mm, is still higher than Samsung 770 TFT's 0.26 mm.
Besides, it only works with analog input and does not support
DVI.

What else does it offer at the moment? Benq has a large-sized,
42-inch plasma display, three different models of cell phones
including one with an integrated PDA, four different models of
CD-RW drives and four portable ones. In the area of presentation
equipment, Benq also has three lines of portable projectors --
ultra slim, ultra portable and portable. There is also the Acer
Digital Camera 300, which can also capture short video clips and
function as a PC camera. Many of these products still carry the
Acer logo.

Hard work is needed.

e-Life was an effort by Acer to enrich consumers' lives with
electronic gadgets, particularly those that allow for direct
links to services delivered through the Internet. This time, Benq
did not really have a special e-slogan to market, which is good
for us as we are getting bored with slogans that actually point
to the same e-lifestyle. Whether Benq will be able to compete
with industry leaders such as Sony and Panasonic-Matsushita
remains to be seen.

One thing is for sure: In the consumer electronics market,
people are not really interested in low prices. They want good
quality products with advanced technologies, whether they really
need them or not. In order to succeed this time around, Benq
should really work very hard to create products that both excel
technologically and work reliably. After all, what is the point
of making expensive 18-inch LCD monitors if they lag behind the
others in their specs?