New management for MSI Computer

Whitebox manufacturer MSI Computer has a new management team.

Country manger, Allen Liu, and general manager, Tracy Tsuei, departed the company Friday. A number of the company’s 23 local staff have also left the company.

Frank Chen will take up the country manager role and will also head up all sales and marketing activity while Cindy Chung will head administration and product planning.

According to Chen, the change was the result of a management rotation policy held by the Taiwan-headquartered company.

“The management rotation approach is quite common amongst vendors,” he said. “Management teams get exposure and experience in one market for three to five years then move on.”

The change was not the result of underperformance or financial difficulty, Chen said.

In a departing letter to the company, Liu praised staff for their hard work and tireless efforts and said 2005 had been a particularly fruitful year across the vendor’s notebook, consumer electric, motherboard and graphics offerings.

Agreeing, Chen said notebook sales in particular had been outstanding. While not providing figures he claimed unit sales had outstripped fellow Taiwanese vendor, Asus.

“We have a new plan for this year and we will be more aggressive in the market,” he said. “Not only on price but on service as well.”

Chen said the setting up of national notebook and PC service centre network akin to Asus’ was a possibility.

Despite only starting the role today, a distribution strategy rethink was already underway Chen said.

“Our current strategy is quite confusing as it feels like everyone is our distributor,” he said.

In August the vendor signed Esys and Impact Systems to broaden its existing lineup of national distributors Legend, Also Technology, BCN Technology and Ingram Micro.

Former country manager, Liu, could not be reached for comment. More on this story to follow.