Acer claims birthday victory

Acer celebrated its thirtieth birthday today with the announcement that it was second only to HP for PC sales in Europe in the three months up to October – tipping Dell into third place.

The company is already notebook market leader in Europe but has been trying to expand its desktop computer business. It put HP ahead with 17.8 per cent of market share in Europe, with both Acer and Dell at 11.2 per cent – implying that the difference in the sales of the latter two was too small to show up in the percentage.

Acer is in fourth place behind HP, Dell and Lenovo for PC sales worldwide and aims to be in third place next year, chairman JT Wang said. 

He believed the news was a vindication of Acer’s strategy of selling through shops and stores rather than direct to the customer via the web like Dell.

And he predicted that this ‘channel model’ would dominate as PCs become more commoditised, and that the trend for more compact machines would make the design and selling of desktops more like that of notebooks.

Buying trends showed that even in the US people preferred to buy a standard notebook from a shopping mall than go onto the web and configure their own system.

“They don’t want to define the VGA [graphics card], define the hard disk, define the memory, define the processor. They don’t want to do that. The consumer is making the change here,” he told a birthday conference in Taipei.

He predicted a further shake out of the industry, with fewer companies making PCs and components. Acer had no plans to takeover any companies but did not rule out the possibility.

“We have to make sure that the company’s financial position is solid, sound. Only if we can ensure that, will Acer consider a merger or acquisition.

“But consolidation [of the industry] is happening so maybe a merger or acquisition will be the best policy for the future.”