Aiming for the top
There have been a few PC OEM success stories during the global recession. Lenovo has done well on the back of a relatively vibrant Chinese market and Samsung seems to have found the netbook sweet-spot. But the big winner over the past year has to be Acer.
As average selling prices for PCs continue to shrink, the advantage has moved from US OEMs, with their more sophisticated sales and marketing operations, to the Far East where, quite simply, they can make PCs for less.
Last week we had confirmation that Acer has overtaken Dell to become the second biggest PC maker in the world. It has done this on the back of notebook and netbook sales to consumers - the only PC sector that has shown growth during the recession.
But Acer wants to be number one, a position still occupied by HP - and by a considerable margin too. HP has plenty to offer consumers, but it's also well established in the SMB (small and medium businesses) and enterprise sectors too. While business spend has been historically low, it's clearly still been enough for HP to maintain its position.
Acer seems to have concluded that it's not going to take number one from HP by relying on consumers and very small businesses alone. So at a recent event in Milan, it announced its shiny new SMB offering, based around the Gateway brand.