Can You Get an eMac for $25?

A Japanese company says it was deluged with thousands of orders for multiple Apple Computer eMac PCs this week after a glitch caused the computers to be listed on an online shopping site for the knock-down price of $25.

Catena says it received orders from around 20,000 people for a total of 100 million of the computers, but in a message on its Web site says it won't be able to fulfill the orders.

The company says a code number assigned to a set of five 8X DVD-R discs, which were the products it was intending to sell, was sent to Yahoo Japan on Wednesday afternoon. However, a product information database matched that code with details for the eMac computer and with the price for the DVD discs.

Steep Savings

The result was a listing for the computer, part number M9461J/A, at a price of just over $25--rather than the usual price of over $890.

Yahoo Japan was notified of the problem at 9:15 a.m. on Thursday morning however the product did not disappear from the Web site until 11 a.m., says Catena.

Both companies have posted notices on their Web sites apologizing for the error.

That Catena says it won't fulfill the orders isn't a surprise. But had it done so it would have catapulted Apple Computer's market share in Japan to around 90 percent for the year.

In October last year IDC estimated around 14.1 million PCs would be sold in Japan during 2004.