Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s fourth-largest PC vendor, yesterday said that sales last month plunged 32.12 percent from September and 29.91 percent from a year earlier.
Last month, Acer posted NT$25.53 billion (US$881 million) in unconsolidated revenue, compared with NT$37.61 billion in the previous month and NT$36.42 billion in the same period last year, according to a company filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
The Taipei-based company said that cumulative unconsolidated sales from January to last month were NT$306.11 billion, down 9.14 percent from NT$336.92 in the same period last year.
Acer did not elaborate on the results.
CONSERVATIVE
During an investors’ conference on Oct. 25, the company adopted a conservative stance toward sales of PCs running Microsoft Corp’s new Windows 8 operating system, although it said it would continue rolling out touch-screen gadgets supported by Windows 8.
FORECASTS
The company said then that its PC shipments this quarter would range between growth of 5 percent and a decline of 5 percent compared with the previous quarter.
Acer shares fell 2.87 percent to NT$23.70 yesterday, down 32.48 percent so far this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day