American computer companies will share the fate of American television brands, Acer founder says

Jan 19, 2010 16:02 GMT  ·  By
Acer says that Dell and HP are on their way to extinction, only 20 years to go
   Acer says that Dell and HP are on their way to extinction, only 20 years to go

There have been a variety of claims making their way to the web lately. Intel has been telling the FTC that AMD sees itself as inferior while ASUS has been saying it will dominate 2010 motherboard sales. Adding to the trend of daring and/or questionable (for lack of a more suitable objective euphemism) statements is Acer, whose founder has not so long ago stated that American hardware makers are headed towards extinction.

While HP and Dell are still among the top players when it comes to hardware of any kind, both of them have suffered at the hands of the economic recession during the past year. General financial turmoil has prompted many end-users to turn to more affordable and mostly mobile computing solutions. Acer has especially much to gain from this, as the low-cost market was its main focus during 2009. As a result, Acer surpassed Dell in overall PC shipments.

The claim that American companies won't outlast the next 20 years originates from a quote in the Commercial Times, where the company's founder, Stan Shih, says that, "The trend for low-priced computers will last for the coming years. But US computer makers just don't know how to put such products on the market... US computer brands may disappear over the next 20 years, just like what happened to US television brands."

While this statement may very well be just another example of a corporate publicity stunt, it is notable that Acer did indeed perform well over the past year. Not only that, but Digitimes even predicts that the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer will even overtake Hewlett-Packard by 2011. Naturally, the main factors behind the success of the company have been its low-cost PCs, especially netbooks.

Of course, there is also the issue of Apple, which, although is selling netbooks drastically more expensive than those from HP, Dell and, of course, Acer, is still gaining market share. This indicates that low prices still aren't the defining factor in the performance of hardware makers.