By MINORU MATSUTANI
Personal computers for as little as ¥1 are currently on sale, attracting flocks of customers and sending shock waves through Japanese PC makers. Major electronics retailers Bic Camera Inc. and Yodobashi Camera Co. have since July been selling a package of a netbook computer and an Internet connection card for as cheap as ¥100, or sometimes even ¥1, on condition that customers keep using EMobile Ltd.'s wireless data service for at least two years.
A netbook is a simplified notebook computer with a smaller display and no DVD drive. It is used mainly to surf the Internet and for e-mail. A netbook usually retails at around ¥40,000 to ¥60,000, but EMobile Ltd. has made the huge discounts possible by paying sales incentives to retailers in a bid to gain long-term
subscribers of its wireless Internet services.
Total shipments of netbooks soared to 1.2 million units last year, up from 100,000 in 2007, and much of the increase can be attributed to EMobile's so-called one-coin PC campaigns, said Harunobu Tobe, a market researcher at Fuji Chimera Research Institute Inc.
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