Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s second-largest PC brand, yesterday said it has no plans to acquire Chinese rival Founder Group (北大方正集團) in the near term, but will tap into Founder’s niche to make a further foray into the Chinese market.
“We are not acquiring Founder,” Acer chairman Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂) told reporters on the sidelines of a shareholder meeting. “We are currently working on the collaboration details with Founder and the contract will be sealed within a month at the latest.”
Acer and Founder signed a memorandum of understanding late last month to utilize Acer’s expertise in the planning, development and design of Founder-brand products including notebooks, netbooks, mobile Internet devices and e-readers.
Acer will take advantage of Founder’s comprehensive distribution channels and the Chinese partner’s strength in PC marketing, especially in rural areas and suburban cities, as well as its rapport with corporate and government clients.
Some market analysts have said this partnership would pave the way for a merger.
“Chances are high for Acer to merge with Founder as it is hard for Acer to break through second or third-tier [Chinese] cities, unlike Lenovo Group Ltd [聯想集團],” Digitimes president Colley Hwang (黃欽勇) told an investment forum on Tuesday.
Lenovo is the world’s fourth-largest PC vendor and the largest in China, its home turf.
Responding to a Taipei Times’ question, Wang said Acer still maintained its targets of doubling revenues in China to US$1.5 billion this year.
“We factored in Founder’s contribution when we announced the forecast earlier this year. At the time, talks had been going on with Founder,” he said.
Acer is expecting revenues for the third quarter to expand 10 percent to 15 percent from this quarter, thanks to its aggressive forays into emerging markets such as China, as well as a slew of desktop launches.
Wang said that Acer is set to tap into its manufacturing facilities and computer models made in China and take them to other emerging markets such as India and Brazil.
“These markets need desktops [more than laptop computers] and we will have models coming with new form factors such as all-in-one PCs or features such as touchscreen, for them,” he said.
He also said Acer’s overall desktop PC shipments this year would surpass 10 million units.
Macquarie Group Ltd’s analyst Daniel Chang (張博淇) said in a report this week that Acer is in the final stages of implementing its China strategy and should find a good way to increase its Chinese market share through its alliance with Founder.
“We expect its China sales to grow strongly starting from mid-third quarter and should contribute 10 percent to 15 percent of total sales by 2011, from around 5 percent in the first half of this year,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Wang said the company always adjusts the average selling prices of PCs depending on market conditions including requests from contract makers.
“The average selling prices of PCs are on an upward trend — the first in five years,” he said.
Acer’s shareholders yesterday approved a total dividend of NT$3.11 (US$0.10) per share, comprising NT$3.10 in cash dividends and NT$0.01 in stock dividends for every share per 1,000 that is held.
Acer’s earnings per share was NT$4.30 last year, excluding the company’s legal surplus, employee bonuses and the board of directors’ remuneration, its statement said.
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