Gateway aims to win over channel mindset

PC vendor claims midmarket positioning will sit well with resellers

Having re-entered the UK arena with a mid-market specialised channel programme, Gateway has its work cut out to convince UK VARs it can compete with established rivals.

The manufacturer was hit hard by the dot-com crash earlier in this decade and has had no UK presence for about seven years. Having been acquired by Taiwanese giant Acer in 2007, Gateway has been reinvented in EMEA as an indirect, mid-market-focused hardware vendor.

The company remains a consumer brand in the US, selling through etailers and retail outlets. Kevin O’Donoghue, EMEA product business manager for Gateway, said: “The fact that we have stayed in the US as a consumer brand does not affect the mid-market in Europe.”

EMEA director, Antonio Papale, claimed that parent company Acer had aligned its four brands ­ Acer, Packard-Bell, eMachines and Gateway ­ carefully.
“Any overlap with the Acer brand will not be relevant,” he said.

But others believe Gateway has a hard road ahead. Greg Carlow, managing director of HP and IBM VAR Repton, said he would not sign with the vendor.

“The brand name has been tarnished,” he said. “This is a volume market and I cannot see the sense in more companies getting into it.”