Altech signs Shuttle

IT wholesaler Altech has signed up as the second Australian distributor for Taiwanese computer maker Shuttle. Under the arrangement, Altech would be distributing the company's line of "XPC" small form factor bare-bones PCs.

Shuttle launched its first XPC, the SV24 in July 2001 and started distributing here exclusively through Sato Technology. Sato was currently moving on average around 1000 pieces per month.

Sylvia Pan, channel marketing executive at Shuttle in Taiwan, said the company wanted to develop more channels here in Australia and agreed that the Shuttle XPC needed to attract not only hard-core gamers but more mainstream PC users.

Safa Joumaa, GM sales and marketing, Australia and New Zealand at Altech, said Shuttle had "incorporated many unusual and ingenious features into their designs, including its patented I.C.E Heatpipe CPU cooling, performance integrated mainboards for everything from an office PC to a graphics-based home theatre PC."

He claimed that over the past few years, integrators and gamers had shown incredible support for Shuttle products.

"It's the dominant [bare-bones] box in the industry at the moment. People are loving it. It's the perfect product to work with. We're very lucky to get it to be honest with you," Joumaa said.

Joumaa expected all resellers to take interest in this product.

The XPC products are available on the Intel and AMD platforms and ship with carry bags, remote controls for long-range navigation, interchangeable front and side panels to a 17 inch TFT monitor.

Shuttle's Pan said that motherboard manufacture was the company's core business but the focus over the last year had been more towards promoting the XPC. "This year we only had one new motherboard launched in the market. More of our focus will be on XPC," Pan said.

There are up to 20 XPC models available on the market and Shuttle competes strongly with other manufacturers such as AOpen and Soltek.

Sato Technology MD Albert Lok, said he hadn't been informed that Altech had been appointed as a second distributor for Shuttle. "XPC sales through Sato had been good so far," he said.