Acer sees strong Q1 PC sales on Vista, CPU war
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(InfoWorld) - The chairman of Acer, the world's fourth largest PC vendor, forecast the company's PC shipments will grow by as much as 50 percent year-on-year in the first quarter and 40 percent for all of 2007, the company confirmed on Tuesday. Acer Chairman J.T. Wang made the prediction on Monday at a Lunar New Year celebration, according to a company spokesman. The story was first reported in the Chinese-language Economic Daily News, which said the reasons for strong growth included stronger than expected shipments of PCs armed withÂ Microsoft's new Vista OSÂ and lower PC prices resulting from aÂ price warÂ on central processing units, the brains of a PC, between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. The spokesman could not immediately confirm the reasons for stronger shipments, but said Acer is seeing brisk growth in emerging markets. The report that Vista is a major cause of Acer's strong PC shipment growth in the first quarter is important because it may be an early sign the new OS is taking off, at least in some markets. Microsoft launched the consumer version of Vista in 70 countries on Jan. 30, and since then its main comment on sales of the OS has been to warn analysts that their forecasts might be too aggressive. Other technology companies have given the OS a mixed review. Quanta Computer, the world's largest contract laptop PC maker,Â credited VistaÂ with record-breaking notebook shipments in January. But Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.Â (TSMC), the world's largest contract chip maker, said VistaÂ won't have much impactÂ on PC sales growth this year. The company is considered an IT industry bellwether due to the wide variety of chips it manufactures. The microprocessor price war between Intel and AMD has been going on for several months, and is a key to creating great bargains for users by lowering overall PC costs. The processor is the most expensive component in a PC. On Jan. 21, Intel released a new price list, slashing the price of some desktop CPUs as much as 69 percent compared to its previous price list, published in late December. AMD published a new price list on Feb. 20, also showing lower prices for certain processors aimed at desktop PCs, including dual-core Athlons, compared to its Jan. 22 price list. The price lists for both companies can be found on their respective Web sites, and all prices are for lots of 1,000 processors. The top global market for Acer products is Europe, while Asia ranks second for the company. In recent years, the company has put a new focus on China and the U.S. Â
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US sales of computers carrying Microsoft's new operating system Vista soared in the week after it was launched, defying the expectations of analysts who gave Vista lackluster reviews.
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(InfoWorld) - Even as PC sales continue double-digit growth, industry revenue is likely to decline 2.5 percent to US$198.5 billion in 2006, according to a forecast released Friday by Gartner Inc. Worldwide PC shipments are scheduled to rise 10.5 percent over last year, reaching 233.7 million units. The disparity comes because PC vendors have been slashing the prices of desktops and notebooks as they hustle to compete with each other. Another force pushing computer prices down is a series of recent price cuts by Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on their processors, the most expensive part of a PC. Now, as the holiday sales season approaches, things could get even worse for vendors like Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. In additional to wrestling with each other, they will also have to compete with consumer electronics companies, said George Shiffler, a research director at Gartner. Shoppers have a limited number of dollars to spend on electronics. That spells trouble for PC vendors since the price of a low-end desktop is comparable to a smartphone and its accompanying service contract, he said. Flat panel TVs will also compete with PCs, since excess production capacity has lowered LCD (liquid crystal display) prices and producers are expected to cut prices further with aggressive holiday discounts. Even Microsoft Corp.'s impending launch of the new Vista OS will produce only a temporary rise in sales, Shiffler said. The Gartner study echoes weak financial results at Dell, the world's largest PC vendor. Dell blamed cost cutting and weak demand for $14.1 billion in revenue for the quarter ended Aug. 4. That number was up only 5 percent over the same period last year although Dell sold 11.6 percent more computers worldwide, climbing from 8.7 million in the second quarter of 2005 to 9.7 million this year. Looking past 2006, the flood of low-cost PCs will drive brisk sales in emerging markets through 2008, but mature markets like the U.S. will soon slump to single-digit growth, Gartner said.
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(InfoWorld) - Retail consumers in the U.S. could begin to see great deals on computer purchases as PC vendors get more competitive in the wake ofÂ Acer's announcement on Monday that it plans to buy Gateway. Acer will probably try to reinvigorate the Gateway brand, using spiffier designs and faster processors in an effort to add cachet to Gateway and eMachines labels which are often seen as "bottom dwellers" selling low-cost PCs, said J.P. Gownder, a principal analyst with Forrester Research. In announcing the deal, Acer President Gianfranco Lanci said he planned to preserve Gateway's "powerful and unique brand" in order to cover a variety of consumer market segments, differentiating the two brands over time in an effort to reach a broader variety of consumers. By announcing its plan to concentrate on the U.S. retail market, Acer is signaling that it will not challenge far larger vendors like Hewlett-Packard and Dell for corporate enterprise deals. Acer also said on Monday that it planned to divest Gateway's professional business division, and was already in talks with a potential buyer. That strategy will probably have a far greater impact on Acer's long-time rival Lenovo than on larger vendors, Gownder said. "For HP and Dell, it's going to be two years before this makes an impact on their business," Gownder said. "Lenovo is the company that really loses here, especially if Acer is able to pick up Packard Bell and get a foothold in Europe, as well." On Aug. 7, Lenovo Group announced it had agreed to buy Packard Bell, but that deal appears to be scuttled: part of Monday's news was thatÂ Gateway will exercise its right of first refusal to acquire shares in Packard Bell's parent company. In addition to tripping up its rival Lenovo, Acer will gain valuable retail leverage in the U.S., including Gateway's online retail site and its shelf space in major retailers like Best Buy Co. Inc., Gownder said. Still, Acer faces a large workload in creating a successful merger with Gateway before it begins to reap profits from the move. "Acer has made a smart, imperfect decision. But from what's available to them, it was the best move on the chessboard," Gownder said. Acer now faces pressure to duplicate its success among small business customers and Asian markets in the competitive U.S. retail market, other analysts said. Acquiring Gateway could give it the leverage to succeed, but only if Acer completes a difficult merger, said Charles Smulders, an analyst and managing vice president at Gartner Inc. First, Acer must make sure it retains Gateway's staff in the U.S. channel and retail sectors, while divesting the money-losing professional business, he said. That move would have little effect on Gateway's small stake of the corporate enterprise market, but a larger impact among its government and academic customers. Then, Acer could dedicate its engineers to improving Gateway's image as an economy brand. "The Gateway brand is very well known, but people are unclear what it stands for. So that is one challenge Acer will face," Smulders said. The company will probably try to establish a reputation for using the latest technology, as opposed to marketing Gateway as the brand with the best technical support or the lowest prices, he said. To Acer's advantage, Gateway has been cutting costs for five years already, so that will be a much easier task than HP faced when it bought Compaq, Smulders said. "I certainly think HP will be taking notes, simply because Acer has been gaining ground so fast, particularly outside the U.S. If Acer can pull this off, it would be a serious challenge to HP." HP declined to comment on the possible implications of the deal. "HP does not comment on the business strategies of its competitors," said corporate spokeswoman Emma McCulloch. 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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Taiwan-based Acer Inc, the world&#039;s fourth largest branded personal computer vendor, has said it is set to more than triple its sales in China this year through its own retail network.
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Hewlett-Packard reported solid financial results for its fiscal first quarter, driven by growth in PCs and enterprise hardware. The results prompted HP to raise its forecast for the year ahead.Revenue for the quarter, which ended Jan. 31, was $28.5 billion, up 13 percent from a year earlier, HP announced Tuesday. Pro forma net income was $2.3 billion, or $0.86 per share, up from $1.8 billion, or $0.65 per share, a year earlier.The figures beat the expectations of financial analysts, who had forecast revenue of $27.6 billion and pro forma earnings per share of $0.81, according to Thomson First Call. The pro forma figure excludes one-time items that slightly inflated the results. Using generally accepted accounting principles, HP&#39;s profit was $2.1 billion, or $0.80 per share.HP&#39;s Personal Systems Group, which produces its laptop and desktop PCs, grew its revenue 24 percent from the same period a year earlier, to $10.8 billion, with unit shipments up 27 percent. Notebook sales climbed fastest, up 37 percent, while desktop sales climbed 15 percent.The division had already been doing well. HP extended its lead over Dell in PC sales last year, according to figures from Gartner. HP ended the year with 18.2 percent of the market, compared with 14.3 percent for Dell. The PC market overall grew 13.4 percent.HP may find it hard to sustain that growth rate, in part because it has to make comparisons with increasingly successful quarters in the year before, CEO Mark Hurd said on a conference call. Still, Hurd said, &quot;when you look at 24 percent growth, I think that&#39;s pretty darned strong.&quot;HP&#39;s imaging and printing group performed slightly less well, with revenue climbing 4 percent to $7.3 billion. Printer unit sales declined by 1 percent from a year earlier, thanks to weakness in the consumer market. Revenue from supplies, which includes HP&#39;s profitable ink business, climbed 6 percent, however.Revenue from the servers and storage group climbed 9 percent to $4.8 billion. Sales of blades and industry-standard servers were strong, while HP&#39;s PA-RISC and Alpha chip businesses continued to shrink. Services revenue climbed 11 percent year-over-year to $4.4 billion, while software sales climbed 11 percent to $666 million, HP said.Hurd said he was pleased with the results overall. He attributed them to successful cost-cutting efforts, the addition of 2,000 new HP sales staff in the past year, and a diverse product portfolio.HP generates an increasing amount of its business overseas, he said. Its biggest market continued to be Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where revenue grew 15 percent to $12.3 billion. Asia-Pacific revenue climbed 22 percent to $4.9 billion. Growth in the Americas was a sluggish 8 percent, generating $11.2 billion.&quot;We generated 69 percent of our revenue outside the U.S., with emerging markets driving significant growth,&quot; Hurd said.The company now expects second-quarter revenue of $27.7 billion to $27.9 billion, and pro forma earnings per share of $0.83 or $0.84. That&#39;s above what analysts polled by Thomson had been estimating: pro forma profit of $0.82 and revenue of $27.4 billion.
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By Ken Dey, The Idaho Statesman, Boise  Jan. 31--The long-awaited Microsoft Vista operating system went on sale Tuesday to consumers nationwide.
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InfoWorld - Dell is seeing strong demand for its products in several Asian markets and is pleased with customer acceptance of Microsoft&#39;s&#160;new Windows Vista operating system, according to one of the computer manufacturer&#39;s senior executives in the region.
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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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Just a few months after Acer's purchase of the American PC maker, the two companies are functioning as one.
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Currys and PC World owner DSG sees sales rise, but says profits will be hurt by poor sales of Vista-related goods.
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Asian computer makers like Acer, Asustek, and Lenovo are aggressively courting U.S. consumers with high-end laptops.
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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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Taiwan&#39;s Acer Inc will buy  Gateway Inc for $710 million to double its U.S. presence and  unseat China&#39;s Lenovo as the world&#39;s No. 3 PC maker, while  dealing a blow to its efforts to grow in Europe.
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Calling Mr K Canute Acer will stick with its policy of pushing up average selling prices for its hardware, despite failing to put a floor under prices so far this year.â¦
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Hewlett-Packard Co.   expects a strong back-to-school season for its notebook  computer business and sees no signs of the consumer laptop PC  market slowing, an HP executive said on Wednesday.