Acer Inc (宏碁) chief executive officer Jason Chen (陳俊聖) yesterday said he expects Acer’s commercial and gaming PCs to drive the company’s operations this year, adding that the overall PC industry is still facing headwinds from last year.
“We are confident that Acer’s gaming segment will continue to grow this year... We also have progressed in the commercial PCs over the past year,” Chen told a news conference at the company’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Taipei.
Chen said the shipment contribution from Acer’s commercial PCs grew to 38 percent of the company’s total PC shipments last year, which is a positive factor for its product portfolio.
“The growing shipments in commercial PCs, which have wider margins than consumer PCs, have solidified Acer’s business portfolio,” he said.
In the US and India, Acer’s commercial PC shipments accounted for more than 60 percent of the company’s total PC shipments, exceeding the shipments of its consumer PC products, Chen said.
Chen said he would focus on maintaining the profitability of Acer’s core businesses instead of taking aggressive measures to increase market share and boost PC shipments amid the declining industry.
“There is no absolute winner in this industry ... the more aggressively we try to increase our market share, the more likely we would lose more amid the shrinking industry. We need to focus on the bottom line of our business,” Chen said.
“HP’s recent decline in quarterly revenues indicates that this is really a challenging industry for everyone,” he said.
HP Inc, the world’s second-largest PC vendor by annual shipments, reported a decline of about 12 percent in quarterly revenues due to weak demand for PCs and printers.
Chen declined to comment on the company’s financial performance last quarter, saying that Acer is to hold a board meeting in the middle of next month to examine the firm’s quarterly results and then would disclose its results to the investors.
He said he is checking the company’s finances on a weekly basis as part of the efforts to maintain Acer’s profitability.
Commenting on Acer’s new non-notebook businesses, which is part of the company’s corporate transformation plan, Chen said the new businesses, such as smart wearables and Build Your Own Cloud (BYOC), saw progress over the past year.
Its partnership with Victorinox AG offers consumers a smart accessory that combines the Swiss knifemaker’s craftsmanship and Acer’s know-how in the Internet of Things (IoT), Chen said.
This is a strategic move for both companies to progress in the IoT field, he said.
In additional to Acer’s IoT business, Chen said the company is to launch an e-commerce store via its subsidiary Weblink International Inc (展碁) in the middle of next month in Taiwan.
The online store would initially offer information technology-related products and would later expand its product range to include agricultural products and cosmetics, the company said.
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