Mitac to score NT$10 B. in revenue from Mio-branded products in 2004

Taipei, Aug. 10, 2004 (CENS)--Taiwan's MiTAC International Corp. expects sales of its Mio-branded products to hit about NT$10 billion (US$292.4 million at US$1: NT$34.2) this year, two times that of last year.

Mitac also expected to ship 800,000 personal digital assistants (PDAs) this year, far outstripping the company's original expectation. Currently, Mio is the No. 1 PDA brand in Taiwan, South Korea, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, Mitac said.

Samuel Wang, president of Mio Technology Ltd. (MTL), the sales arm of Mitac Group's Mio-branded wireless communication products, said that over one million units of Mio-branded products (including 800,000 PDAs and 200,000 Smart Phones) are expected to be sold this year.

Mitac's PDA production plant in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, mainland China is operating at full capacity to meet strong market demand. Plagued by the power shortage in eastern China, Mitac's Kunshang plant produces the board products used in PDAs at daytime and assemble them into finished products at night.

Currently, Wang said, about 30% of the Mio PDAs are sold by MTL and the remaining 70% are distributed by Mitac's major distributors worldwide.

Statistics compiled by International Data Corp. (IDC) showed that Mio accounted for 4% of the Asian market (excluding Japan) for PDAs in the fourth quarter of last year, but the market share jumped to 9.2% in the first quarter this year.

Mitac is also actively deploying its sales networks for Mio-branded products in Europe, the U.S. and Australia, etc. The company claimed that a higher sales growth is expected in the second half of the year, as it will launch several new-generation handheld wireless communication products with global positioning system (GPS) navigation functions for automobile applications. Mitac would also form strategic alliances with electronic-map data suppliers in various nations to enable its GPS PDA models to run globally.

Mitac donated 60 Mio 168 GPS-navigation PDAs, which are preloaded with electronic maps of the entire country of Greece and a guide to Olympic venues, to the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee. The Mio 168 was also designated by the committee as the official GPS navigation product for its 2004 Olympics delegation.

The Mio 168 features several advanced functions such as route planning, full-route voice navigation, intersection voice alerts, map zoom function, GPS status indicator and easy one-button operation etc.