Acer expands vision with product launch
Firm unveils peripherals, desktops and tablet PC ranges
Acer has announced a plethora of new products and confirmed that Gianfranco Lanci will become president of the firm in January next year, after chief executive Stan Shih retires.
"It should now be clear that we are not just a notebook company. We addressed the peripherals market a few years ago, and we are now looking at desktops and LCD TVs," said Paul Cook, UK managing director of Acer.
The firm has entered the digital camera market, boosted its projector, LCD monitor and tablet PC ranges, and said it will work with Computer Associates on anti-virus provisioning.
John Sidwick, managing director of audiovisual distributor Maverick, said the world has changed since Acer restructured three years ago. "Projectors are now a necessary peripheral," he said. "The likes of Dell and Hewlett-Packard [HP] have accepted they need to have digital cameras and printers as well."
Acer also claimed first place in EMEA portable PC shipments, after seeing 60 per cent growth for the second quarter in the region.
The firm's favourable market share in EMEA contrasts with the decline of HP laptop shipments during Q2. Acer caused an upset in the UK earlier this year when it knocked HP off the top spot with 70.2 per cent year-on-year growth in the first three months of 2004.
Acer also bolstered its current tablet PC range from two to four, and defended the platform, which constituted less than one per cent of laptop sales in EMEA, according to recent Canalys figures. Acer's tablet sales are relatively high, at between two and four per cent of its laptop sales.
"Microsoft developed the tablet platform on Acer," Cook claimed. "We took the lion's share of the business when it launched. Three years on, I think you will see just about every laptop with a touch-screen option."
However, Gordon Davis, general manager at VAR Compusys, was sceptical.
"Tablets run at a premium - even at Acer - and there's not that many applications," he said. "I'd also be a bit concerned about desktops. There are plenty of vendors that have gone before Acer in bringing PCs to the market and got murdered."