ASUS to chase business PC market with free AI, or no AI – because nobody knows what to do with it

Computex Analysts rate Taiwan’s ASUS the world’s fifth most prolific PC-maker, but the company wants to climb the charts by targeting business buyers, according to Shawn Chang, Head of Go-To-Market for the outfit’s Commercial Business Unit.

Speaking to The Register during the Computex even in Taiwan last week, Chang said ASUS knows many PC fleet buyers would not automatically add it to their list of possible vendors.

Everybody wants AI, but nobody knows how to use it

The company hopes to change that attitude by building robust and resilient products.

Chang said even ASUS’s low-end business PCs come with two sockets for memory and solid-state disks, to allow upgrades over the five-to-seven years he believes businesses now expect computers to last. ASUS also builds especially robust USB ports into its PCs, as when weaker connectors fail it often damages a motherboard and necessitates expensive maintenance. The company also installs a physical Trusted Platform Module on business PCs and will update BIOSes for five years.

ASUS has also invested in on-device AI. The company’s “ExpertMeet” tool can translate, transcribe, and summarize meetings. “AI Search” indexes on-device files and, if users allow it, will also ingest files from cloud storage lockers. Whatever data users allow AI Search to access, the tool can search it, summarize it, or produce mind maps. Both tools are free forever.

Chang said ASUS will bundle its AI wares on machines aimed at small-to-medium businesses that he thinks want to explore how AI can improve productivity without paying a subscription fee.

“A $30 subscription per employee is quite a lot for a small business,” he said, and expressed hope that free AI will attract buyers.

He’ll happily omit AI from machines sold to larger buyers, due to concerns about data security and privacy.

Chang also said that while ASUS sees high interest in AI, businesses he encounters are yet put it to work

“Everybody wants AI, but nobody knows how to use it,” he said. ASUS therefore feels that shipping a PC without AI won’t deter buyers.

Which is not to say that ASUS will eschew AI PCs. At Computex the company announced its first range of AI PCs packing AMD CPUs in laptop, desktop, all-in-one and mini-PC form factors. ASUS also sells machines powered by Intel and Qualcomm processors.

The Register put it to Chang that ASUS has a strong brand in consumer and gaming PCs, but even with the innovations mentioned above may struggle to interest business buyers.

He responded by revisiting ASUS’s history in the PC market, which in the early 2000s saw it move out of the motherboard market by building gaming laptops. Chang said that the time few believed gamers would consider a portable machine, but over time ASUS created and led a market – evidence it can do the same with business PCs. ®

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