Dell could go indirect with Acer buy - analyst
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Model 2.0 Michael Dell could prove that "Dell 2.0" is more than a marketing throwaway by buying rival Acer, according to a leading Wall Street analyst.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - CDW is the latest IT company keen to go private, a move that could give the large U.S. computer reseller the freedom to tinker with its business and growth plans without having to spell out those intentions every quarter for investors. In recent months in deals worth billions of dollars, private equity firms have come to the fore as future homes for technology companies, includingÂ electronic payments and commerce specialist First DataÂ andÂ customer information management company Acxiom. CDW entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by private-equity investment firm MDP (Madison Dearborn Partners) for $7.3 billion, the companies confirmed late Tuesday. Subject to shareholder approval and other closing conditions, the parties hope to complete the deal by the end of the third quarter or early in the fourth quarter of this year. Already, Michael Krasny, CDW's largest stockholder who controls around 22 percent of the company, has agreed to vote his shares in favor of the acquisition, according to John Edwardson, CDW chairman and CEO. Krasny is CDW's founder and chairman emeritus. Edwardson said Wednesday that a private-equity group made an unsolicited approach to CDW's board of directors, leading them to go through an evaluation process with several potential buyers. MDP offered the highest bid for the company. Because that process wasn't public, CDW will now actively solicit bids from other interested parties to see if they can top MDP's offer, he added. The so-called "go-shop" period should last 30 days. "This represents the next chapter for us," Edwardson said on a Wednesday conference call. "Changes are constant for us." CDW resells computers, software, and networking equipment from the likes of Acer, Apple, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Sony, and Symantec to U.S. and Canadian SMBs, governments, schools, and some enterprise customers. CDW does some customization of the technologies it resells and also provides a range of services. One of the company's prime competitors is Dell, which has begun to veer away from its direct sales credo, and also other indirect channel players. At the same time, given CDW's size, smaller resellers may choose to buy equipment and software from the larger player and then provide it to customers. CDW's business model has been to compete aggressively on price, according to Leslie Rosenberg, research manager, network channels and alliances at IDC, and she doesn't expect that to change once the reseller becomes a private entity. She views CDW's purchase last year of high-end systems integrator Berbee as an interesting and somewhat puzzling development. CDW has yet to integrate Berbee into its operations, keeping it more as a separate operation, and Rosenberg wonders what the reseller's long-term plans are for that business. MDP is committed to CDW's existing strategies, Edwardson said. In an 8-K report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, CDW included a coworker FAQ, which listed some of those objectives, notably becoming a $10 billion company in revenue by 2008 and extending the Berbee business on a national scale. Once the deal is final, MDP intends to keep the current CDW management team intact, Edwardson said. "I plan to stick around," he wrote in a Tuesday e-mail message to CDW staff. Founded in 1984, CDW went public in 1993. The company employs over 5,600 staff and reported revenue of $6.8 billion in 2006. Edwardson doesn't expect any job reductions once CDW becomes a private company.
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Less-than-direct activities Dell continues to cheat on its twenty-year relationship with the direct sales model. Having fallen behind HP in the worldwide PC market, the Texas manufacturer earlier this month began selling selected desktops through WalMart stores in the U.S. and Canada. It's flirted with indirect sales in Europe. And now, it's in talks with various retail outlets in Asia.â¦
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Would you buy a Dell (DELL) PC from a sales associate in a blue vest? Dell's main method for selling computers-directly from the manufacturer-isn't getting the job done, so the Round Rock [Tex.] PC maker found a partner to help push its machines: Wal-Mart (WMT).
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TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan personal computer vendor Acer Inc. expects its computer shipments to increase 30 percent to 40 percent this year, a reduction from previous sales forecasts.
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Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) has been chosen under the Army's Desktop Mobile Computing (ADMC-2) contract to provide desktop and notebook computers, displays, printers and peripherals for three years.
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Acer, the world&#39;s third largest PC vendor, is taking aim at Japan this year as a key place to grow its booming business, the company chairman said.The Taiwanese company plans to extend its business model of working closely with, and sharing profits with, distributors, to Japan, where companies such as Sony and Toshiba dominate the market, Acer Chairman J.T. Wang told local media in Taipei. An Acer representative confirmed the statements.Acer also plans to release new products in the second or third quarter of this year aimed at ultra-mobility and the low-cost segment of the PC market, Wang said.The Acer representative declined to provide further details on what kind of devices the company may launch, but local media in Taiwan speculate that Acer is planning an ultra-low cost laptop PC to compete against&#160;Asustek Computer&#39;s Eee PC laptop.Asustek created the Eee PC to sell in emerging markets such as China and India. It carries an Intel Celeron processor, weighs less than a kilogram, has a 7-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) and can connect to the Internet wirelessly. The lowest-priced version costs NT$7,999 (US$248).The Eee PC has garnered so much attention for Asustek, which forecast it will sell 3.8 million of the devices this year, that many of its fellow Taiwanese&#160;competitors are developing rival devices. Taiwan&#39;s Micro-Star International&#160;(MSI) has said it&#39;s working on an ultra-low cost notebook&#160;that will use an extremely low voltage, low-cost microprocessor from Intel called Diamondville. Intel has said it will formally unveil the new chip at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai this April.Acer also believes its&#160;first quarter sales will be far better than last year, despite global economic worries. Wang told local media that Acer&#39;s sales will rise 15 percent to 20 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, which ends March 31.&#160;
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A lose-lose for the computer business: Dell's competitors will take a hit, and the computer giant's margins will shrink even more.
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Digesting Gateway and Packard-Bell Acer has pulled itself off the acquisition trail for the foreseeable future and will spend the next couple of years digesting Gateway and Packard Bell.â¦
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TAIPEI/SHANGHAI  - Taiwan's Acer  will  buy Gateway  for $710 million, creating the world's No.  3 PC maker and doubling its U.S. presence while dealing a blow  to arch-foe Lenovo's  efforts to grow in Europe.
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Just a few months after Acer's purchase of the American PC maker, the two companies are functioning as one.
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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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Acer's acquisition of Gateway will result in a different product mix starting with some new Gateway laptops to be released early next year, an Acer executive says.
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Acer's acquisition of Gateway has had a definite impact on its overall market share, its chairman said Friday, and forecasted the manufacturer would be able to ship 25 percent more computers in 2008.
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Some observers are concerned that Acer is paying too much for Gateway, and some say the deal doesn't add much to Acer's arsenal except size.
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Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) wants a big piece of global sales of MP3 players and has launched a new device to take market share from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). But it is doubtful that Dell will be successful any time soon.
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Dell Inc.  is considering  offering the Linux operating system as an alternative to  Microsoft Corp.'s  Windows on its personal computers, a  Dell spokesman said on Tuesday.