Taiwanese company Viewsonic who has a chequered history in Australia is now taking a stab at the netbook market. In the past the company has tried the TV market, the monitor market, and the projector market in an effort to get themselves established as a serious player in the consumer electronics and IT markets.
During the past 5 years the Taiwanese Company has had little success in Australia. They have also gone through a procession of management and categories in an effort to establish themselves.
A major player in the CRT monitor market Viewsonic lost market share as the market moved to flat panel LCD display.
They then tried to compete in the flat panel TV market only to find themselves squeezed on margins. Now they are trying to enter the Pro AV market with commercial display screens and projectors while also trying to be a player in the highly competitive PC and netbook market as well as the small TV market.
In the past the Company has struggled to hold onto staff in Australia.
At one stage the Company hired Brendan Frawley formerly of Samsung and now the Sales and Marketing Director at Hybrid Television Services the distributor of the Tivo PVR.
Frawley quit after only a few months. Also quitting the Company at the same time as Frawley was Viewsonics marketing manager, Erie Zhang.
Prior to that there had been a procession of Country Managers with few staying less than a few months.
One senior manager who recently quit the Company said “Viewsonics is not a good place to work. There is very little marketing yet Taiwan expects instant sales”.
The Company that has five staff in Australia recently hired Ray Clarke as the Australian manager of business development.
They are also set to enter the all in one PC market with a monitor that includes a built in netbook PC with a 160 GB Hard drive.
The 18″ display screen delivers only 720 screen resolution at 1366×768. It also lacks a TV tuner similar to the Sony Vaio all in one PC’s. In addition the viewing angle is only 160/160 degrees.
More a netbook than a notebook configuration the device will have an Atom N270 processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD.
Earlier this week Viewsonic launched the VNB101 netbook in Australia an effort to take on the likes of Acer, Toshiba, Dell, HP and Samsung along with brands like ASUS and Nokia who yesterday announced new netbook offerings.
The new Viewsonic offering has a 25mm form factor and weighs in at only 1.1kg. It is not known which retailers will range the product.
The new netbook will sell for $699
