★ PEOPLES ★ LAUNCH IN SINGAPORE (CPC464 USER) ★ |
| Launch in Singapore (CPC464 User) |
Our international correspondent (resident in Hong Kong) visited the recent launch of the CPC464 at the Personal Computer 84 Exhibition held in Singapore this is his report: Although Singapore has a population of 2.5 million, it does serve as the centre of trade for the surrounding area - Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. This particular venue was carefully selected as being the most suitable from many other shows currently being staged throughout the region. And judging by the way that our distributor's stand was jammed from the opening ceremony to closing time at the end of the 5 days, our decision was totally justified. This was all the more surprising as at the last minute, agents from some of our competitors, namely Oric and Spectrum had pulled out. Krom the market research that we had previously carried out in the region, we knew that Singapore would be as difficult a market as Hong Kong. Both Governments, whilst officially banning “fake apples”, and copies of other popular machines, appear helpless to control the situation and independent sources put the percentage of fake units as high as 80%. Given these facts, it was very encouraging to see a large crowd forming around our stand whilst the minister in charge of Science and Technology, gave the opening address. Visitors were sceptical of our claim that the CPC464 was the ideal home computer for them. Quite a few of them have previously bought other makes and were clearly disappointed with either the unit itself or the after sales service or lack of software support. It didn't take long to impress most of them that although the CPC464 was a newcomer having been launched in the UK in June it was an exceptional machine with over 70 software titles under its belt. By the afternoon of the first day it was proving impossible to talk to all of the potential customers that were crowding the stand. With the new DDI-1 Disc Drive and a DMP-1 printer we hastily provided personal invitations allowing prospective purchasers to travel back to our distributor's main showrooms in the centre of the city by special arrangements with a local car hire company. All they had to do was to give the driver the invitation with their name printed on it and show their identity card. CPC464 USER (1/1985)
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