Minister pushes use of locally assembled PCs

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Minister for Communications and Information Sofyan Djalil launched a campaign promoting locally-assembled personal computers (PCs) in an exhibition here on Tuesday.

He said at the opening of the one-day exhibition that the domestic production of low-priced PCs would help increase sales among the youth across the country, thereby increasing their skills in information and communication technology.

The exhibition presented 18 small-scale PC-makers from 18 towns that have been assisted by Intel Indonesia Corporation to produce PCs bearing their own brands.

These companies exhibited PCs with Intel Celeron and Pentium processors with memory capacities ranging from 128 megabytes (Mb) to 512 Mb and hard disk capacities ranging from 30 to 80 gigabytes (gb).

Their products were offered at prices ranging from Rp 2.8 million (US$297) to Rp 8.5 million a unit.

Intel Indonesia Corporation country manager Budi Wahyu Jati said his company aimed to increase the number of small scale companies assisted by Intel to 40 by the end of this year.

Indonesian Computer Business Association (Apkomindo) chairman Hengki Tjokro Adiguno said the country had 4,055 small-scale computer-related companies operating in 110 cities.

Budi said Intel trained the companies participating in the program about financial and marketing management, branding and other business practices.

"We hope the participating companies will be able to produce PCs of high quality and sell them at competitive prices," he said.

Intel currently controls a 99 percent share of the branded PC market in Indonesia.

According to market research firm IDC, about 873,000 branded PCs were sold in the country last year and the number is expected to exceed one million this year.