Gateway to success
Readers may well already be aware that Acer has adopted a multi-brand strategy since its acquisitions of eMachines, Gateway and Packard Bell.
While the distinctions between the brands remain a bit vague to anyone outside of Acers marketing team, eMachines is the entry-level brand, Packard Bell and Gateway try to attract the design and brand-conscious in Europe and North America respectively, and Acer is...everything else.
Well that's about to get even more complicated, in EMEA at least. Acer's new SMB offering, which includes a brand new range of servers, will be branded Gateway.
"We've been spending the past two years reinforcing our consumer product offering," said Acer CEO and president Gianfranco Lanci (pictured below) at the Milan event. "We started thinking about reinforcing the professional business over a year ago." Although, he stressed, 30 percent of Acer revenues already come from SMB users, though its professional PC range.
So it could be the case that Acer has been sitting on its hands a bit, before attacking the SMB sector, while it waited for the global recession to run its course. While business spend isn't expected to pick-up until the second half of next year at the earliest, Acer's channel-only model will need a bit of time to get up to speed, so it could be timing this move just right.
