Wang paid his first personal visit to Taiwan recently to seek cooperation with large-sized notebook PC and LCD TV makers on the island. In light of Taiwanese notebook PC brands' competitive edges, such as efficient supply chains, excellent production and R&D capability and cost efficiency, he said, Gome is quite interested in cooperating with them to distribute their products in China.

In the meantime, besides existing Taiwanese partner TPV Technology Ltd., Gome is also going to contact another leading Taiwanese LCD TV maker, Amtran Technology Co., Ltd. for cooperation, according to Wang. Amtran now is well known as the production arm for Vizio, one of the top two LCD TV brands in North America.

Wang indicated that Gome now operates more than 1,100 chain stores in China, scoring sales revenue of RMB100 billion (US$14.63 billion) in 2008, with communication devices, LCD TVs and notebook PCs as the three hottest sellers among its available portfolio.

He said that scale of the Chinese market for consumer electronics has been rapidly growing to up to RMB800 (US$24.61 billion) a year, with notebook PCs emerging as the stellar products in the market. For reasons, he noted, lowering unit prices make the products more affordable for local consumers than before. Presently, a notebook PC sells for about RMB3000 (US$439.17) per unit on average, especially friendly to students. Furthermore, with Chinese telecom companies actively promoting wireless Internet accesses and 3G communication services, notebook PCs and netbook PCs are increasingly popular in the market.

The firm's increasing sales of notebook PCs reflects the aforementioned situation in the market, with the products contributing 7-8% to the firm's total sales revenue in the first half of this year, higher than 5-6% of a year earlier.