MOBILE COMPUTING
SASIWIMON BOONRUANG
Kohjinsha, based in Japan and a newcomer to Thailand, recently announced its entry into the Thai ultra mobile PC market (UMPC) by appointing Synnex (Thailand) as distributor for the Kohjinsha UMPC.
The Kohjinsha UMPC features the smallest available touchscreen with a 360 convertible design, Windows Vista Home Basic and Microsoft Office applications, and comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support.
Kohjinsha overseas general manager Toru Kurosawa told Database that Kohjinsha was the UMPC market leader in Japan, and last year the company entered the market in Korea, China and Taiwan.
Thailand was the first country in this region, he said, noting that Kohjinsha sells some 10,000 units annually in Japan.
"In China, sales are larger because the market there is bigger," he said.
Kurosawa admitted that the cultures of Thailand and Japan are different, with Japan having many different market levels, and users with two to three computers, and the UMPC was specifically for mobile computing. It could be used in a car for GPS navigation and then could be carried for general computing, he said.
As a pioneer in this new category, the Kohjinsha UMPC has proved popular in Japan and other Asian countries. The general manager said the success was due to applications such as GPS and translation. According to Synnex (Thailand) president and CEO Supant Mongkolsuthree, mobility and dynamic new lifestyles have driven consumers' growing needs for technology and UMPC devices would fit the market very well.
"The features of the new UMPC category are identical to tablet PCs, but the price is much lower," he said, adding that users could run any applications on a UMPC device they could on a notebook PC.
Supant admitted that Kohjinsha was a new brand, unfamiliar with the Thai market, though it has been successful in other countries and the company would spend some 10 million baht on advertising and promotional activities.
He noted that the UMPC, combined with netbooks, would take some five per cent of the overall notebook market this year and would grow to 10 per cent over next year. The target markets for UMPC are businessmen, young executives and students. Two Kohjinsha UMPC models are available here, the SR Series, at 37,900 baht, and the SH Series at 29,900 baht.
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