Acer Inc, the largest supplier of laptop computers in Europe, is seeking to quicken the pace at which the company clears stock in Germany as demand growth slows in the region.
The company wants to lower its inventory turnover to as little as 40 days from 60 days currently, the head of the Taipei-based company's German unit, Oliver Ahrens, said in an interview on Friday. A higher number signals possible excess inventory. Sales in Europe, as a portion of Acer's total revenue, will drop to 60 percent this year from 65 percent last year, he said.
"In Europe, Middle East and Africa, we already have a 20 percent market share," Ahrens said at the CeBIT technology show in Hanover, Germany. "It's not possible to double that again. Growth is now coming from Asia and the US."
Acer unseated Japan's Toshiba Corp as the world's third-largest supplier of notebook computers by shipments in the fourth quarter, according to market researcher Gartner Inc. The Taiwanese company's global market share for the product was 12.2 percent, ahead of Toshiba's 10.5 percent, Gartner said.
Sales of all Acer products worldwide this year will jump to US$11.4 billion from US$8.3 billion last year, the company said in a presentation at CeBIT on Friday. Ahrens said the numbers exclude contributions from Acer's subsidiaries. The US portion of total sales will rise to 17 percent this year from 15 percent last year, he said.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
RSS