Overview

Presently, the hardware development is more often adjusted to the cultural and language peculiarities of a specific country and nation. In different countries, different alphabets and rules for coding currency units, date, time, numbers, etc. are in use. Sorting algorithms for verbal texts present a special kind of problem. The solutions represented in the standard are based on international standards and conform with draft standards in preparation, such as ISO new code tables, the UNIX standard project POSIX, also national language support facilities of the IBM and Microsoft companies. Making the choices standardizing code tables and keyboard layout, international agreements that seemed to be closest to the conditions of Estonia and Latvia were chosen, making only a minimum of necessary changes. For this reason, the code tables presented in the standard do not include the letter c with caron and cyrillic letters, which have some practical importance for the Estonian and Latvian cultural environment.

Market profile

The Latvian Association of Computer Manufacturers (assemblers) consists of 12 companies. Sales for these companies varied in 1998. For some companies sales increased 30% - 80% compared to 1997. For others, sales dropped by 30%. About half of the Latvian computer market is covered by the top 10-15 distribution companies, with an annual turnover of $3-15 million. Imports of PCs not assembled in Latvia are greatest from South East Asia, followed by the US and Germany. Recently, the market was driven by hardware sales, with computer companies growing 30-40% every year. Now, major computer companies present in the market forebode a rapid saturation of the Latvian computer hardware market. So, in an effort to become more efficient and competitive, many computer companies are focusing now on the quality of their services.

The protection of intellectual property rights and copyrights is still insufficient in the Baltic region. Counterfeit computer components are imported in large quantities and reportedly used in local assembly of personal computers. The Government of Latvia has made several modifications to the Intellectual Property and Copyright Law with regard to computer hardware and software, pending the parliament's approval.

Market access: There are no restrictions or non-tariff barriers regarding the import of computers. Customs tariff classification is based on the Harmonized System of international practices. There are no duties for imported computer hardware, computer components or computer network components. All products, regardless of origin, are subject to an 18% Value Added Tax (VAT) (13).
 
 
 

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