Acer eclipses Lenovo, takes aim at Dell
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Acer has passed Lenovo Group as the world&#39;s third largest PC vendor with its&#160;purchase of Gateway, and now it&#39;s&#160;gunning for U.S. giant Dell.Next year, Acer could take up to a 12 percent share of the global PC market, putting it in the position to challenge Dell, said J.T. Wang, chairman of Acer, at the company&#39;s third-quarter investors&#39; conference in Taipei on Friday.Shipments by Acer have been growing fast this year due in part to a focus on laptop PCs, the hottest segment of the PC market, and the company&#39;s strategy of working closely with distributors.Acer&#39;s shipments grew 58 percent year over year in the third quarter, according to Gartner. The Taiwanese PC vendor accounted for 8.1 percent of global PC shipments during the quarter, compared to its 5.9 percent share during the same time last year. The figures do not include Gateway, which&#160;Acer bought&#160;for $710 million last week.Dell&#39;s unit shipments grew 3.5 percent during the quarter, but it still lost market share compared to last year, finishing in second place at 14.4 percent compared to 15.9 percent.Hewlett-Packard kept its title of the world&#39;s biggest PC vendor by shipments during the quarter with an 18.8 percent share, compared to a 16.1 percent share a year earlier. Lenovo, the fourth place vendor, took an 8 percent share, compared to 7.5 percent last year. Market researcher IDC puts&#160;Lenovo ahead of Acer&#160;according to its third-quarter PC shipment figures.&quot;We believe we can maintain strong growth momentum through 2008,&quot; said Wang.Acer forecasts it will still grow by a double-digit figure next year, and faster than the global PC industry. Executives also said the fourth quarter of this year looks to be a good quarter, with no indication of a decrease in demand for PCs.&quot;We have not seen any slowdown. Demand is still quite good,&quot; said Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer. He forecast unit shipments to grow 10 percent to 20 percent over the third quarter. The company did not say how many PCs it sold in the third quarter, but Gartner puts the figure at nearly 5.55 million units.In the fourth quarter, Acer will also start adding Gateway shipments to its figures, which will add to its market share.Gateway sold only 865,000 PCs in its biggest market, the U.S., during the third quarter, down from 1.01 million the same time last year, according to Gartner. Lanci believes a stronger laptop PC lineup will boost Gateway&#39;s market share figures in the U.S. going forward because the mobile PC is the hottest segment in the industry. New Gateway laptops could be out as early as the first quarter of next year.And Dell isn&#39;t sitting still. Efforts to turn around its business finally paid off this quarter when its worldwide unit shipments rose for the first time in four quarters. It&#39;s a huge company with a lot of resources and could still turn itself around. Acer&#39;s executives said size was becoming ever more important in the global battle for PC market share because bigger companies can force suppliers to cut their prices. That means Dell, as the second biggest PC maker, is still in a strong position.REFERENCES:Wall Street Beat: Acer masters the Art of War, Aug. 31, 2007Acer completes Gateway acquisition, Oct. 17, 2007Acer to acquire Gateway for $710 million, Aug. 27, 2007Gateway brand to expand after Acer purchase, Aug. 27, 2007
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Catching up to Google, Yahoo unleashes a desktop search tool  Also: IBM makes move in data storage market & hellip;.  HP makes cheap computer with rural Chinese appeal & hellip;. and more.
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PERSPECTIVE With yesterday's rollout of the long-awaited AMD-based Dimension E521 desktop line, Dell may very well have made available one of the best-performing value-class systems under $1,000.  But with the company facing a number of hurdles, how long can it afford to keep margins so low?
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November 15, 2004 - Acer America today has announced its newest notebook in its Ferrari line of notebooks, the Ferrari 3400. Featuring a Mobile AMD Athlon 64 3000+, the notebook combines the market strength of three major brands, Acer, AMD and Ferrari.
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(InfoWorld) - People fearing they might miss Gateway's signature black-and-white dairy cow PC boxes after the company is acquired by Acer Inc. have little reason to worry: Acer not only plans to keep the Gateway Inc. brand just the way it is, the Taiwanese company hopes to expand it. "A strong U.S. brand such as Gateway's can be expanded overseas into other markets," said Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer, in a video feed at the Taipei news conference to announce the deal. Acer's determination to grow the brand should be some relief to American users. Gateway is the fourth biggest PC brand in the U.S., and popular among consumers. But until now, Acer has sold all of its products under its own name. Its strategy going forward is to start using multiple brands in all areas of the world, including the Gateway brand, as well as eMachines and possibly Packard Bell.Â Gateway plans to buy Packard Bell BV, which would ultimately end up as another Acer brand once the Acer-Gateway deal is finalized. Going forward, Acer plans to combine the talents of each company in order to expand product offerings for users. For example, Gateway is strong in desktop monitors, where Acer is weak, so Acer will use some Gateway technology to improve its offerings, said Lanci. The two companies will see where they can share designs and technology to improve their entire desktop and laptop PC line-ups, and expand this product cooperation to Packard Bell if a deal for the company is made. The deal could also mean more PC bargains for users. Becoming larger means Acer can gain better volume discounts when negotiating with parts suppliers. In addition, competition with Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. should remain fierce, and the companies all work hard to keep prices low. Acer agreed to buy Gateway in an all-cash deal valued at US$710 million. The two companies combined will become the world's third largest PC vendor by shipments, at around 20 million desktops and laptops a year, and will transform Acer into a multibrand company. The Acer-Gateway deal still faces regulatory and shareholder scrutiny before being finalized. The boards of directors of both companies have already signed off on the agreement. Acer expects to gain $150 million worth of efficiencies via the Gateway deal, in expanding product lines, cross-selling products, cost cutting and in other ways. The Taiwanese company said Gateway employees would be critical to its success in expanding the brand, but did not say whether it would cut staff. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Taiwanese PC vendor Acer Inc. has started selling laptop PCs at popular retailer Best Buy Co. Inc., expanding its presence in the U.S. market. Best Buy is featuring Acer laptop PCs with a brand spotlight notice on its Web site. All five of the Acer laptop PCs on offer at Best Buy are priced under US$900. The most expensive of the five is the Acer Aspire AS5610-4537, which runs on an Intel Corp. Core Duo processor. It costs $849.99. The lowest-priced Acer laptop at Best Buy is the Aspire 420 notebook, AS3680-2022, which runs on an Intel Celeron M and retails for $499.99. According to the Web site, the notebook is already sold out. A similar Aspire 420, the AS3690-2710, runs for $699.99 with a larger, 15.4-inch screen. Acer has targeted the U.S. and China as two major potential growth markets for the company, and has invested more resources into the two countries over the past few years. Acer is the world's fourth largest PC vendor by revenue and the fastest growing PC vendor in the world among the top 10.
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Acer Inc.'s shares fell sharply Tuesday, one day after the Taiwanese computer maker said it would acquire Gateway Inc. for $710 million.
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Two new displays from Envision and Lenovo offer good-quality video for desktops that can't handle larger monitors.
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PC vendor Acer sees strong first-quarter PC sales on Vista, CPU war.
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(InfoWorld) - Making an effort toÂ compete with DellÂ for business users, Lenovo Group has launched a widescreen version of its ThinkPad line of notebook PCs. The ThinkPad T60 will use a 15.4-inch widescreen, yet hold its weight down to 5.1 pounds, lighter than any comparable notebook from the top five PC vendors, Lenovo said Tuesday. The company also hopes that adding this feature will regain consumers' confidence after Lenovo was forced in September toÂ recall the batteries from 526,000 ThinkPad modelsÂ -- including the T60. Like notebooks sold by competing vendors Dell, Apple Computer, and Toshiba, those computers used lithium-ion batteriesÂ manufactured by Sony, whose faulty design could lead to overheating and fire. Lenovo already sells widescreen notebooks in other product lines, such as the Z-series and 3000-series for small businesses, but this is the first widescreen model for corporate users, said Rajat Aggarwal, product marketing manager for the T-Series at Lenovo. Those customers can already chose a T60 notebook with 14- or 15-inch screen, but have recently been asking for the full widescreen version, allowing them to display more columns on an Excel spreadsheet, show multiple windows and fit better onto airplane tray tables, Aggarwal said. In another nod to high-end users, the notebook will be capable of running Microsoft's new Vista OS, with a dual-core Core 2 Duo processor from Intel and graphics card from ATI. Despite this package, Lenovo is lagging behind its rival PC vendors in delivering widescreen notebooks to the business market, analysts said. "Lenovo is playing catch-up in the widescreen game," said Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis. "Lenovo is a little late to the game because Dell's entire lineup of corporate systems is available in widescreen right now. Dell just identified a market shift before Lenovo did." Still, the product should be popular with Lenovo's core audience, the corporate user, Bhavnani said. Since acquiring IBM's notebook PC division in 2005, Lenovo has succeeded at preserving the ThinkPad brand's history of innovation, rolling out features such as the tablet PC and integrated wireless broadband. Lenovo is selling the ThinkPad T60 notebook with 15.4-inch display for $1,399 in the base model. Users can upgrade to a version that works as a laptop workstation for faster numeric computation or to run the Vista Premium OS.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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Taiwanese PC vendor Acer predicts its PC shipments will grow as much as 35 percent this year led by a strong notebook PC market, a pace of growth that could see the company challenge U.S. rivals by the end of this year.Acer&#39;s revenue grew 25 percent last year to NT$461.7 billion (US$14.42 billion) and the company made inroads to the world&#39;s largest PC market, the U.S., by acquiring Gateway. The revenue figure is preliminary and only includes Gateway&#39;s last two and a half months of the year because the merger process took place late in the year.Acer bought Gateway&#160;for US$710 million last year.But the figures and PC shipments had a tremendous impact on Acer&#39;s global PC rankings in the final three months of 2007.The company took a solid third place in global PC shipments last year,&#160;topping Chinese rival Lenovo and gaining ground on Dell. Acer&#39;s global PC shipment market share during the fourth quarter of 2007 reached 9.6 percent in the fourth quarter, up 60 percent over the same time a year earlier, according to IDC, the industry researcher.Lenovo, which had been jockeying for third place with Acer all year, fell to fourth with a 7.5 percent share of the global market. HP retained its first place ranking with 19 percent market share, while Dell remained firmly in second place at 14.6 percent.&quot;Combined Acer/Gateway growth continued to be the fastest among the top vendors and is a very solid performance for the first quarter of merged operations,&quot; IDC said in a statement. &quot;Acer also clearly established itself as the third largest vendor, overtaking Lenovo, and seems to be handling the Gateway integration quickly,&quot; the statement says.This year, Acer forecast its PC shipments overall will rise between 30 percent and 35 percent, led by 40 percent shipment growth in notebook PCs. Such strong growth could help the company challenge Dell, which saw its PC shipments grow only 1.7 percent in 2007, according to figures from Gartner. The market researcher put Acer&#39;s shipment growth last year at 32.9 percent for the year.Acer&#39;s chairman, J.T. Wang, predicted last October that Acer could take up to a 12 percent share of the global PC market, putting it in the position to challenge Dell.Acer&#39;s net profit was NT$12.9 billion in 2007, up from NT$10.2 billion a year earlier. The company&#39;s 2007 figures are all preliminary, Acer said. Final results will be published later.&#160;
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Fingers lack of Vista demand Acer has scaled back its expectations in the PC market after an optimistic forecast earlier this year.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - The chairman and CEO of Acer Inc. has vowed to step down if the company's bid to join with Gateway Inc. does not succeed. "The merger will definitely succeed. If it doesn't ... I will resign," the Chinese-language newspaper, Economic Daily News, quoted Acer Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang as saying in an interview published Wednesday. Acer spokesman Henry Wang confirmed the statement. The statement came amidÂ growing criticism of the acquisition, which the companies' boards have approved. Industry watchers and stock market analysts have called the US$710 million purchase too expensive, saying Acer should have foregone the deal and continued to grow its U.S. business from the ground up. The company's U.S. sales have grown at over 100 percent for the past few years, according to Acer. Other analysts fear Acer may have trouble bringing Gateway into its fold because it may ultimately become a three-in-one deal, including Gateway subsidiary eMachines and Europe's Packard Bell BV. That may be too many companies to absorb in one go, analysts say. "The premium paid to Gateway may be too high, and the execution risk of multiple-brand strategy is clearly the key here," said Vincent Chen, PC industry analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets in Taipei. Taiwanese investors don't like the deal, either.. Acer's shares have fallen by their daily market limit, 6.9 percent, for each of the past two days to close at NT$55.1 (US$1.67) Wednesday on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Acer agreed on Monday to buy Gateway in an all-cash deal for US$1.90 per share, a 57 percent premium on its closing share price of US$1.21 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. Acer said the deal will transform it into a much larger company with US$15 billion per year in revenue and shipments of nearly 20 million PCs, giving it a solid base in the important U.S. market. The companyÂ plans to market multiple PC brands worldwideÂ after the transaction, thereby increasing sales. The deal will also help it cut costs. Size is vital to gaining volume discounts from parts suppliers, Acer said. The purchase still faces regulatory and shareholder approval. Â
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Acer Inc. executed a master stroke in the global war for PC market share withÂ its US$710 million purchase of Gateway Inc., but it may take a while for the market to see the light.
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(InfoWorld) - YahooÂ reached a deal for prime real estate on all Acer PCs shipped globally, with a co-branded toolbar, homepage, and search engine, the companies said Wednesday. In a deal that extends the battle for the PC among Internet companies, Acer laptops and desktops shipped from Oct. 1 will direct users to an Acer-Yahoo homepage when they click on a Web browser, complete with Yahoo portal content such as the Yahoo search engine, news, music, sports and the Yahoo Personal Assistant. The pact mirrors anÂ agreement between Dell and GoogleÂ earlier this year, and ups the ante with MicrosoftÂ and other companies battling to drive PC users to their Internet-based services. The PC desktop has become a battleground for companies fighting to increase their brand awareness and Internet ad revenue. The comingÂ launch of Windows VistaÂ highlights the issue because Microsoft is moving toward putting more and more Internet capabilities, such as search, on its OS, which would make it the first item users see when they boot up their computer. In May, Dell agreed to install Google homepage and search tools on all desktops and notebooks shipped to consumers and small and medium-size businesses worldwide, effectively kicking Microsoft out of a position it has occupied for years. The Yahoo, Acer deal does essentially the same thing, and while Acer isn't nearly the size of Dell, it is the fastest growing PC vendor among the top 10, and is based in Asia, the fastest growing PC market in the world, according to market researcher IDC. Yahoo and Acer referred to the agreement as a multi-year deal, but did not specify how many years, nor whether it would involve any kind of revenue sharing. Acer will factory-install the co-branded toolbars and homepages on all of its desktops and laptops, the companies said. Once Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 7, Acer will set Yahoo as the default search engine for IE7 on all of its computers. Neither Yahoo nor Acer representatives were immediately available for comment.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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TAIPEI/SHANGHAI  - Taiwan's Acer Inc will buy Gateway Inc for $710 million to double its U.S. presence and unseat China's Lenovo as the world's No. 3 PC maker, while dealing a blow to its efforts to grow in Europe.
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A fast growth rate and recent acquisitions in the U.S. and Europe will extend Acer's lead over Lenovo as the world's third-largest PC vendor.