14 DAY TRIAL // Acer may have gone through a fairly troublesome first quarter, but it looks like it might have surpassed the greatest hurdles and is getting close to what one may name normal operations, as suggested by its expected notebook sales.
The biggest problem that led to Acer abruptly letting go of its CEO back near the end of the first quarter of the year (2011) was the sharp decline in PC sales.
After the whole restructuring and change of business direction, it now seems that the outfit is seeing higher notebook sales figures.
According to a report made by Digitimes, the company hopes to somehow surpass the 3 million notebook shipment mark, in retail, this month (June, 2011).
This will be a stark rise compared to April, for instance, when only 1.6-1.8 million notebook were shipped to the retail channel.
May already brought a 60% on month increase in shipments, but Acer's upstream partners (Compal, Wistron and Quanta) didn't see the same level of growth.
For example, Compal shipped 3.6-3.7 million notebooks, plus tablets, during April and May, with May showing an actual on month drop as Acer kept trying to empty its inventories.
Acer's European retail channel is facing an especially big case of oversupply, although, fortunately, the improving situation in China and Southeast Asia have been counterbalancing this issue.
All in all, the sales for the second quarter (the April-June period) should be able to amount to 7.2-7.4 million notebooks.
The final factor that shows Acer is recovering is the revenue growth of 25.9% during May.
Back when the outfit announced it was changing its tactics, it said it would focus less on shipment volumes and more on product quality.
What remains is to see how this influences its financial goals for the third quarter and if it manages to meet said goals by the end of the July-September, 2011 period).