The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday fined PC maker Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) NT$200,000 for making commercials that misled the public about its rival Acer Inc’s (宏碁) product quality.
The Asustek commercial said a graphics processing unit in its tablet products was 1.1 to 1.2 times faster than those in Acer’s tablets.
The commission said an investigation found that New Taipei City (新北市)-based Asustek did not specify in the commercial how it had conducted the speed test, but the ad claimed that all Asustek tablet products were better than Acer’s in terms of quality.
LACK OF DETAIL
“Asustek chose not to specify complete specification of Acer’s products, but boasted only features of the company’s own in the commercial,” the commission said in a statement posted on its Web site.
“Based on the biased information provided by the commercial, the public could be misled about Acer’s products, which Acer actually promoted on their light weight and wireless data transmitting functions,” it added.
ADMISSION
The commission said Asustek admitted that the speed test result would not be consistent if it were conducted with different testing software.
Given that Asustek could have publicized Acer’s tablet products’ full specifications, but chose to omit the procedure while making the commercial, the commission said that Asustek had misled the public about its competitor’s product quality.
Asustek was fined for violating the Fair Trade Act (公平交易法), the commission said.
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