14 DAY TRIAL // Acer, the world’s second largest manufacturer of portable computer systems, has a bright future ahead as it aims to ship more than 40 million notebooks next year, giving the company an opportunity to surpass the current market leader, Hewlett-Packard. The shipment target is largely based on the company's impressive results for this year, which allowed Acer to gain the number two spot on the market, consequently surpassing Round Rock, Texas-based Dell.
According to a recent news-article on DigiTimes, citing Acer's chairman JT Want, the PC vendor intends to reach a notebook shipments target of 40 million units in 2010, thus becoming the world's number one vendor. To achieve this, the company will have to face fierce competition coming from HP, which is now on the first place, and is also expected to move over 40 million notebooks next year. In addition, Digitimes also reports that the two market leaders will likely widen the gap between them and the world's number three, Dell.
Acer's plans include a significant growth in shipments in the notebook segment, one of the company's most successful product lines. In addition, Wang pointed out that Acer's strategy differs from that of its competitors in the sense that it focuses on small- to medium-sized businesses and consumer markets, whereas HP and Dell are directing their efforts on the enterprise market. Whether this strategy will enable Acer to further increase its market presence is yet to established.
Earlier this year, Acer announced that it expected its 2010 notebook shipments to reach between 33 million and 37 million units. However, thanks to a good performance in the second half of the year, the company updated its forecast with a more confident 40 million units. This is rather impressive, considering that in 2007 Acer recorded shipments of 15.4 million, having managed to double its annual performance in just two years.