No stopping Acer

(By Richard Holway 8.30am Thurs 12th Nov 09) I have played a little game recently, asking people who is the #1 suppler of PCs in the European market. Everyone answers either HP or Dell and are surprised when I tell them it's Acer – because they are King of the low cost Netbook.

This situation was maintained in Q3 according to Gartner. In Western Europe Acer had a 28.3% market share compared with HP’s 21.5% share. Overall, the number of PCs shifted was down slightly. As units get cheaper and cheaper, I expect the revenues earned declined quite significantly.

UK PC sales were down 2.3%. If you want another example of ‘Diversity of Performance” this is about the best. Acer sales were up a massive 35%. At the other end of the price scale, Apple was up 3.8%. Conversely Toshiba, Dell and HP slumped 26%, 15% and 10% respectively.

To repeat, Gartner figures are volume/unit based – by revenue it must have been even more awful.