Taiwanese manufacturer DXG announced its entry into the North American market with its own brand of digital cameras at the International CES, here.
The company manufactures cameras for a variety of brands, including Hitachi and Vivitar and said through a spokesman that it manufactured 1.5 million units last year. DXG had made a tentative step into the U.S. markets last year with its own brand of digital cameras sold through Fry’s Electronics and MicroCenter, but according to Tom Pinkel, product marketing manager, DXG, CES was a “coming-out party” for the company’s North American efforts.
The company is initially targeting cameras in the sub-$300 price band where there is “enough room for growth,” Pinkel said. He added that even if 80 percent of consumers were buying cameras based on brand awareness, there was still enough of a market in the remaining 20 percent for a vertically integrated company like DXG to be competitive.
As with many Taiwanese and Chinese OEMs seeking entry into new markets, pricing will be aggressive, but the company will also emphasize styling and portability in search of a female audience, Pinkel said.
Thanks to its vertical integration, the company is advantageously positioned to “react quickly” to fluctuations in the market, Pinkel said. “We have a 20 SKU assortment that we can call on to really customize our product offerings to different retailers,” Pinkel said.
The company announced five new digital camera SKUs and one combo digital still/video model that will be shipping during the first two quarters of 2003.
The DXG-301V is a combo MPEG-4 video camera with a 3.2 megapixel CCD. It sports a 1.8-inch TFT display, 4x digital zoom, 16MB of internal memory with an SD/MMC card expansion slot for a suggested $199. It will ship in the March/April timeframe.
The company also announced DXG-329 and 332, second generation 3-megapixel CMOS-based cameras with a slim design. Both feature a 1.5-inch TFT display, 4x digital zoom, 16MB of internal memory with an SD/MMC card expansion slot, AVI video capture mode and replaceable alkaline batteries. The cameras will ship in February/March for a suggested $149.
The 3-megapixel DXG-303 adds MPEG-4 video capture, voice recording and an MP3 player. It will ship in the spring, but pricing was not available. The DXG-305 will also ship in the spring and offers 3-megapixel resolution, AVI video capture, voice recording and an MP3 player.
At the top of the line, the 4-megapixel DXG-402 is CCD-based and features a 3x Olympus optical zoom lens, a 1.5-inch LTPS high-resolution TFT display, 4x digital zoom and 16MB of internal memory with SD/MMC expansion for a suggested $249. It will ship May-June.
