Success in the personal computer market used to be about how big and how fast. Like most other product categories, it’s now about marketing, branding and design. After acquiring US-based PC maker Gateway in September last year for US$700m and scooping up the Netherlands’ Packard-Bell in the process, Acer late last year took another step in its global domination plans – becoming official sponsor worldwide of the Olympic Games, starting at the winter games in Vancouver, Canada, in 2010 and London 2012.<\/p>\n
The irony is that the Taiwanese manufacturer replaces its nearest competitor – Lenovo, which hails from the same corner of the world – as the official technology supplier and global sponsor. How much Acer had to pay for the privilege of using the rings and laurels on all its marketing is a secret, but estimates are that more than $80m is needed to join the likes of Visa, Coca-Cola, Samsung and McDonald’s. Acer has also been appointed as chief audiovisual supplier to the Olympics and its burgeoning plasma and LCD display business should receive a healthy boost.<\/p>\n
Even without adding the sales from Gateway and Packard-Bell (the latter acquisition is awaiting regulatory approval), full year sales figures will show Acer at number three after HP and Dell. Acer already sells more laptops than Dell.<\/p>\n
Apart from its Asian home base, Europe, Middle East and Africa has been a stronghold for Acer. It’s the number two vendor overall and sells the most notebooks in the region. Thanks to keen pricing and a line-up featuring edgy designs from carmaker BMW’s studio, in SA the company commands 25% of the laptop market. Acer South Africa says they’ll soon be bringing the Gateway brand to the country for the first time.<\/p>\n
The 2008 global PC market will be all about notebooks: in the US, notebooks already outsell desktops, sales of which are static.<\/p>\n
For the manufacturers, the shift represents an opportunity to increase margins – razor thin on desktops, which often represent bulk deals to companies.<\/p>\n
Notebooks now come in all shapes, sizes, and colours and are tailored for every conceivable consumer and business niche. So-called desktop replacements come with screens of more than 20″, and after a slow start, tablet PCs are gaining more acceptance.<\/p>\n
Ultra-portable notebooks are expected to become the must-have accessory for the mobile warrior this year, helped by the introduction of solid state or flash storage devices (SSD) in portables. Unlike magnetic hard drives, SSDs – commonly found in MP3 players – have no moving parts, meaning longer battery life. Connectivity, processor speed and storage capacity continue to show dramatic improvements, but power consumption is the one area where technological advancements have been frustratingly slow.<\/p>\n
Response times for SSDs are also much faster than conventional hard drives but much pricier on a gigabyte for gigabyte basis (around $19, or R140\/Gb). Acer already offers a half a terabyte (500Gb) laptop, but the highest capacity SSD-equipped PC in the market from Samsung sports a mere 64Gb. However, as with speeds and feeds, expect SSDs to become cheaper and bigger at a rapid rate.<\/p>\n