VIA Technologies to Market Low-Cost Notebooks

by Anton Shilov
02/23/2004 | 12:35 PM

A chipset company, who transformed its mainboards division into so-called embedded division recently, wants to start offering inexpensive notebooks for Indian market based on its own microprocessors with some assistance of its UK- and India-based partners.

The Times of India reports that VIA Technologies is planning to launch notebook computers priced at 30 thousands rupees ($660, €530) in India by the second week of March. The first laptops will be based on VIA’s C3 central processing units at up to 1.0GHz and will be equipped with 128MB of RAM and 20GB hard disk drives. Traditionally, VIA is likely to utilize components of its own development in the notebooks.

The mobile computers will be manufactured by VXL Instruments in Bangalore, India. VIA Technologies will reportedly market the notebooks with its UK-based partner ACi.

VIA Technologies has been selling its microprocessors for a number of years, but the firm’s market share is still negligible compared to companies like Intel or AMD. The country that adopted more VIA’s chips than any other is India, therefore, it is logical for chipset designer to start offering affordable notebooks for that market to expand its presence and to boost sales.

There is no information whether VIA is planning to sell similar notebooks in other countries as well. So far Dell has been one of the only companies to offer a truly mobile PC at $699 price point in the US.