ChinaÆs leading PC manufacturer, Hong Kong-listed Legend Holdings Ltd, is mounting a new challenge to overseas competitors with the launch of its own mid-range servers. With a nearly 20% share of the domestic PC market from a standing start five years ago, Legend has put a huge hole in the profits of the foreign giants such as IBM Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co and Compaq Computer Corp who until very recently dominated in China. Now it is confident of being able to do the same thing in the rapidly-developing server sector.
Legend Holdings executive director Yang Yunqing said the companyÆs new server clustering system, the NS1000, is designed for firms in the internet, financial services, telecommunications and securities industries. The supply of servers in China, especially for high-end products, is now dominated by foreign-made equipment whose cost has hindered the establishment of information infrastructure and advances in the internet arena,” he said.
Yang claimed the Legend system will cost less than half the price but will provide similar capabilities and scalability to mid-range foreign-made servers. It has been developed inhouse by Legend researchers he said, but with input from various multinational partners including Microsoft Corp, Intel Corp, Giganet, APC and Oracle.
Yang said the rapid development of the internet in China has seen a parallel move in the server industry from traditional local area network and wide area network servers to more powerful machines for telecommunications, internet service and content provision, corporate intranet, and other electronic business applications.
LegendÆs first generation of servers for the LAN and WAN markets had a 6.2% market share in 1998 which had risen to 9.4% by the end of June this year, Yang said.
