Simon Lin, president and chief executive officer of Acer Inc., based here, agreed to a point. He sees the functionality of the PC as more important now than strictly price. Acer's XC program envisions dedicated machines for specific tasks like commerce, education and entertainment. We will use different mainboard form factors as well as different software and component configurations for each of the different XC products, said Lei. Significant costs can be saved by using small, bare-bones mainboards with just the necessary components.
Price is the third consideration.
For the OEMs the ability to cut the cost of sales and service is essential. That means that the PCs must be easy to use. Now it is possible to offer a full-function product at that price point. It's not the price point that is so important. What is important is that full functionality can be met at a low price point.