Acer Inc is aiming to earn a US$20 million net profit from the US market alone this year, the company's CEO said.
This is the first time the world's No. 4 PC vendor by shipments has set a profit target for the US market. The move is part of the company's strategy to reduce its heavy reliance on the European market.
"We are very small in the US," Wang Jeng-tang (
Acer lags behind Dell Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co and Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) in overall PC shipments, and holds only 3 percent of the market in the US. Sales there last year totaled US$1 billion.
But Wang believes now is the time for Acer to become more aggressive in the US market, and he aims to boost annual sales there to US$2 billion this year.
That would constitute 16 percent of Acer's global sales target for the year. And the US$20 million in net profit it hopes to achieve in the US would account for 6.5 percent of its total earnings projection for this year.
Wang said that working with national distributors such as Circuit City Stores Inc allowed Acer to sell computers at actual shops, rather than on the Internet as some of its rivals do.
"There are people who prefer to buy things from the stores," Wang said. "Distributors still play an important role in the market."
In contrast to Dell's direct sales model, Acer relies 100 percent on distributors to sell its computers.
But consumers can also buy Acer-branded computers through the Internet, since most distributors such as Circuit City also offer online shopping services, Wang said.
Currently, Acer's main customers are from the retail and small to medium-size corporate markets.
"When our annual sales in the US grow to US$3 billion-US$4 billion in the next two to three years, we will then tackle big corporate orders," Wang said.
He said the company is aiming to ship 15 million to 16 million computers worldwide this year and 25 million units next year, up from 9 million to 10 million units last year.
Meanwhile, it aims to lower its sales dependence on Europe to 50 percent from the current 60 percent-plus and to increase sales in the US, China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.
"In the past 10 years or so, we never expected to make any profit from the US market," Wang said, adding that last year, Acer's US business was "above break-even point."
He said when the company first set foot in the US market, it still thought of itself as a manufacturer and it didn't handle after-sales services in a timely way. As a result, it was left with high inventory of computers with prices already falling by a third or more.
Aside from personal computers and liquid-crystal-display (LCD) monitors, Acer is considering selling LCD TVs in the US in the near future, Wang said. The company already sells LCD TVs in Europe, Australia and Taiwan.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”