Chip giant Intel looks to tap creative edge of Chinese designers

The United States chip giant Intel Corp is stepping up efforts to target designers in China by unveiling a new category of tailor-made personal computers in cooperation with its industry partners.

The new category of "Creator PC" is designed for the core demands of creators by helping capture their inspirations and unleash their talents. The move is part of Intel's push to meet the demand for all market segments to boost the development of personal computers.

"As an important productivity tool empowering creativity, PCs need to provide strong computing power for creators in different areas," said Wang Rui, vice-president for the sales and marketing group at Intel.

"Intel and industry partners launched the new Creator PCs to help creators unleash their talent with high-performance hardware platforms," Wang said.

Intel is seeking to meet rising demand from the processing of massive pictures along with high-definition videos in the entertainment market, and the increasing use of high-tech design tools in the architectural industry.

To meet the demand, Intel has worked with several industry partners including PC makers, content providers and retail channel partners to customize PCs. So far, they have jointly developed over 100 Creator PC designs.

Intel said creators often produce, design and render with desktops at home and in the office since those desktops are more powerful and stable. For those who are mobile and working in places like shooting sites, airports or cafes, they want their laptops to be powerful, portable and beautiful.

The US company classified all these products into three categories based on seven creator scenarios. Those are graphic design, photography, short-form video; high-level graphic design and post-production; and architectural and industrial design.

The Creator PCs feature different CPUs, memory, storage, graphics, display and ports. They allow creators to easily do high-workload desktop and mobile work.

Intel quoted data from market research companies, saying that China currently has 17 million professionals who work in the creative design industry, with 21 million as semi-professionals and 77 million as design amateurs. The group requires high-performance computers.

China's top e-commerce platform and shopping malls have launched the product category "Designer PC" at JD and Gome and "Creator PC" at Tmall and Suning, Intel said.

World PC shipments declined 4.6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019 to 58.5 million units, data from market research company Gartner Inc showed.

Mikako Kitagawa, senior principal analyst at Gartner, said in a research note that "we saw the start of a rebound in PC shipments in mid-2018, but anticipation of a disruption by CPU shortages impacted all PC markets as vendors allocated to the higher-margin business."