Taiwanese personal computer giant Acer Inc has taken a first step in its entry into the Russian market. It has appointed a Russian country manager, Steve Kuzara, who will move to Moscow this month and has also appointed three distributors: Moscow-based Kami, Steepler and CompuLink. Steepler is offering a five year guarantee on its Acer machines. Mr Kuzara says the Russian market has now reached a stage when it is ready for Acer and its products. Until recently the market was dominated by very cheap clone machines with small number of customers buying more expensive IBM Corp or Hewlett-Packard Co machines. He says that Acer believes the price of clone machines has risen relative to the rest of the market while customers are now making more sophisticated decisions and are comparing not only specifications and prices, but also product reliability and guarantees.
