Hewlett-Packard, the world's No. 2 PC maker, said Friday it has launched a $483 (3,999 yuan) computer in China, turning up the heat in the intensely competitive market.

The price matches that of a similar bare-bones model rolled out earlier this year by the country's biggest seller, Lenovo Group, as players introduce cheaper models targeting smaller cities and the countryside where most of China's 1.3 billion people live.

The news comes days after Lenovo said it was buying IBM's PC-making assets for $1.25 billion to help it expand beyond the competitive domestic market.

DBS Vickers analyst Joseph Ho said he was not surprised by HP's latest China move.

"The market remains very difficult for Lenovo," he said. "Their backyard is on fire...The China market remains very very competitive."

HP's new model, part of its Pavilion series, features a central processing unit (CPU) from Advanced Micro Devices and a FreeDOS operating system, both cheaper alternatives to more popular CPUs from Intel and the Windows operating system from Microsoft.

The computer recently went on sale, a representative said.

China recently passed Japan to become the world's second-biggest PC market, with 13 million units sold last year and the number expected to grow 20 percent in 2004, according to market research company IDC.

But with many of the wealthiest big-city residents already owning PCs at home, vendors are having to turn to less affluent areas to look for growth in the consumer segment.

In announcing its interim results last month, Lenovo characterized China's PC market as one with a "crisis lurking in every corner."

Lenovo already controls more than a quarter of all sales and is unlikely to see that amount grow as it faces new threats from the likes of international powerhouses HP and Dell.

Lenovo accounted for 26.4 percent of China's unit PC sales in the third quarter, followed by domestic players Founder Group at 10.3 percent and Tongfang at 8.7 percent, according to Gartner. Dell was fourth with 8.1 percent, followed by IBM at 6 percent and HP at 5.2 percent.