RSSAcer's Growth Hiccups as Lenovo Reclaims World #3 PC Maker Position
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published September 6, 2007, 6:52 PM
We've been using the term "resurgent" in conjunction with Acer so often that you'd begin to think it was a brand name for a new PC model. But in the quarter just ended the surge failed, so to speak, as hardware analysis firm iSuppli reports unit shipments for Acer fell by 10,000 for the first time in several quarters.
For the second quarter of 2007, the "resurgent" tag belongs elsewhere: first to Lenovo, which responded to Acer's first quarter challenge with flying colors. Shipping 22.9% more units in the second quarter than it did in the first, Lenovo pumped out about 4.87 million PCs. In so doing, it bumped Acer in iSuppli's global Top 5 OEM list back down to #4, and took back 1.5% of market share.
And at last, the news actually looks good for Dell, which staked at least a partial claim to the "resurgent" title. It took back 1.1% of global market share, on what the company hopes will be its comeback trail, shipping about 9.5 million units worldwide.
Despite those gains, it wasn't Hewlett-Packard that coughed up any of its dramatic gains from the past three quarters. Number one HP too gained 1.1% of global market share, not distancing itself further from #2 Dell but not ceding ground to it either, with just under 11.2 million PCs shipped.
Dell's numbers are still down over the second quarter of 2006, but if that company keeps up this pace, it could stop the hemorrhaging.
HP's unit growth this last quarter "outpaced the expansion of the overall PC industry by nearly a factor of three," according to an iSuppli statement this afternoon.
As for Acer, expectations for the third or fourth quarters of this year, after its planned acquisition of both Gateway and Packard Bell, are high. That big gulp should automatically give Acer 2.5% more global market share, and would have enabled it to retain the #3 spot had the deal been closed in the last quarter, iSuppli said today.
Toshiba hangs on to the #5 spot with nearly flat growth over the previous quarter - another surprise stall. If Toshiba can't resume its former growth pattern, it could before too long find that spot challenged by of all companies, Apple, whose quarter-to-quarter Mac shipment growth was about 17% in Q2.
Lenovo is a sleeping goliath. When China gets serious about putting some force behind their manufacturing and marketing of computers it will be a rough day for companies like Acer, Dell and HP.
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|America: made in China
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|I fell asleep. I don't care about cheap chinese labor in my products as much as I care about reliability.
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|Since when has quality EVER translated into marketing success or dominance? You're on crack.
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|I'm not sure I'd agree with that. They are still relying heavily on the ThinkPad name in the markets outside China and HP, Dell and Acer are starting to make inroads in China. Once Lenovo starts trying to expand beyond ThinkPad, I think they're going to have a tougher time.
I think Apple is really the one to look out for here, especially in the consumer space. They are really the only company with any real growth in the whole market. As more people pick up on the fact they can install Windows on there, or install software like Parallels, just in case they need to run something, I see them to start making more inroads in the more mature markets like Europe and Japan, and then on to the more developing markets. I also think we will start to see more small and medium sized businesses, as well as schools, choose Apple as their market share continues to grow. My university of 22,000 students is in the process of replacing the vast majority of our computers with iMacs. Five years ago that would never have happened.
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|Poor customers...
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|Err, what?
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|what he means is.. poor customers. As in not rich. All those HP's he bought. First one blew up on him. Second one was a piece of junk, and third well it had Vista on and he told smitfraud.c to "allow" instead of "cancel". That's what happens when you don't build your own.
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