Acer Inc (宏碁) chief executive officer Jason Chen (陳俊聖) yesterday said the company’s Chromebooks and its new notebook computers are facing component and assembly shortages due to stronger-than-expected market demand.
The company has requested both suppliers and assemblers increase their capacity to ease the constraints, Chen said.
“Orders for Acer’s Chromebooks and notebooks are more than the company’s forecast when we launched a series of new products in Berlin in September,” Chen told reporters on the sidelines of Acer’s forum on “smart city” development in Taipei.
HIGHER PRICES
The continued increase in the average selling prices of some components has also weighed on the supply situation, Chen said.
Chen declined to specify which components are in short supply, but industry sources said DRAM, NAND flash, LCD panels and graphics cards have seen strong price rebounds this year due to a lack of supply in the past few months.
Acer has started to ship some products by air instead of its regular ocean freight services in an effort to deliver the goods to markets before the Christmas shopping season, Chen said.
He expects the shortages to ease before the end of this year after the Christmas shopping season orders have been digested.
SERIOUS SHORTAGE
Demand for Acer’s Chromebooks, especially in the education and business sectors, has caused a serious shortage of the company’s products, Chen said.
While the company’s rivals are lowering their Chromebook prices to gain market share, Acer is focused on profit rather than on market share, Chen said.
The average prices of Acer’s Chromebooks are between 10 percent and 30 percent higher than its peers, he added.
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