Acer sees itself in RP’s top 3

ACER Philippines Inc., a subsidiary of Taiwanese firm Acer Inc., is confident of surpassing the 40-percent Asia-Pacific growth rate in sales of Acer products for the year.
       Manuel L. Wong, Acer Philippines general manager, said they have in fact breached that mark in the first quarter.
       “I’m proud [to say that] that in the first quarter, the Philippines is among the outstanding performers in the region in terms of units, volume and revenue. We performed above average,” said Wong.
       Such strong performance would push Acer’s standing in the local PC market to the top three this year, from last year’s number four slot, he said.
       The Acer Asia-Pacific operation includes Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand. Compared to these countries, however, the Philippine sales account for a small 10 percent in terms of revenues with the biggest share coming from Australia and Malaysia.
       He did not provide the statistics but according to preliminary data by Gartner Dataquest, Acer’s worldwide PC shipment during the first quarter rose 45.5 percent year-on-year, and was the fastest-growing vendor among the top-five.
       The worldwide industry average growth stood at 13.1 percent.
       In the Philippines, about half of Acer sales come from notebooks and the rest from desktop and peripherals. The top three competitors are HP, Dell and IBM. Max V. de Leon