ASUS in the Mobile World

Marketing - the key to success

As you may have gathered, we were quite impressed with what we saw from the MyPal A600. Frankly, we have never seen such a full featured PDA in such a small package. We truly feel that, from what we have seen so far, the MyPal A600 has the potential to take quite a bit of market share away from major players in the PDA market such as Compaq, HP, and even Palm. The problem that the MyPal A600 faces comes not from hardware or design limitations but rather from marketing limitations.

As a Taiwan based motherboard manufacturer, ASUS has had little experience with the mass branding and marketing of a consumer electronic device. Ensuring the success of a PDA product in the vicious world of mobile computing is more than a bit different than successfully branding and marketing a motherboard solution. Instead of facing competition from other Taiwanese companies such as MSI and Gigabyte, ASUS is forced to compete with large US based companies like Compaq and Sony; companies with large budgets and advertising dollars to throw around.

We feel that the success of the MyPal A600 will be dictated by what ASUS chooses to do with the product. Introduce the MyPal A600 into the retail channel through a few online stores and the product is likely to draw in a limited number of customers no matter how good it actually is. People will not be able to see and play with the product, an aspect of buying that certainly favors the MyPal A600. If anything demonstrates this, it is what we saw on the floor of Computex. The ASUS booth was constantly buzzing with people waiting in line to play with a few MyPal A600 units mounted under glass.

If instead of selling online ASUS places the MyPal A600 on the store shelves of CompUSA, BestBuy, and Fry's, they have the potential to steal a large potion of the market away from the current players in the PDA arena. If we were to walk into a major retail store looking for a PocketPC solution and see the MyPal A600 placed side by side a Compaq iPaq, we can guarantee that we would walk out the owner of a new MyPal A600.

As one of the largest computer manufactures in the business, ASUS has the money and might to enter the PDA market properly. Let's just hope that the execution of the MyPal A600 goes well, as the company has the potential to shock the industry and spur innovation throughout the PDA market.

Be sure to check back on AnandTech in the coming weeks, as our ASUS MyPal A600 sample should be arriving soon. Look for a detailed review soon in the same fashion as our other mobile reviews.