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Thanks to year-end holiday demand, Acer’s notebook sales went up 78% on year in North America during the holiday period from November 19-26, according to company chairman Jason Chen citing figures from research firm.
In particular, sales of gaming notebook models and Chromebook devices even grew more than 300% and 250%, respectively, on year during the holiday season, Chen added.
Since early 2017, Acer has also been pushing PC products into the military market in North America, Chen noted.
Currently, China and the US are the top-2 largest PC markets worldwide. Acer also performed strongly in China in the second half of 2017. Acer’s revenues from China grew 26% on year in the third quarter, and in October the company’s revenues increased 91% on year and 13% in November.
Because of the fierce competition from local brands in China, Acer has been pushing partnerships with China’s stream service providers to seek student idols to endorse its products. Acer is also sponsoring e-sport events in China to boost its brand image.
However, Chen expects the gaming market to reach its peak in three years and VR will be the next key growth driver. For that, Acer has established a joint venture with Starbreeze to push multimedia entertainment VR applications.
Chen pointed out that Acer’s VR team is now mainly focusing on the VR theme park in Dubai, the UAE, which will be opened in January 2018, while the team is also planning to establish another VR experiencing center in Los Angles. So far, Acer has already opened VR experiencing centers in Los Angles, New York and Shanghai.
Acer has recently begun selling its mixed reality (MR) head-mounted display (HMD) jointly developed with Microsoft, and is forming collaboration with Asia’s largest fitness center chain Life Fitness to push a combination with the gyms’ spinning classes. Acer has also been working with companies to push the HMDs to the movie and music concert sectors.
However, Acer will not just be a hardware supplier in the VR/MR area, said Chen adding that the company is crossing into new business fields such as software, services and system integration.
As for AI, Acer’s current development is mainly focusing on the smart parking application. Following its acquisition of a Taiwan-based smart parking software developer, Acer has been enhancing the software’s functionality and has partnered with banks to offer online payment services and started trying out new smart parking management system and mini stations in Taipei, Tainan and Kaohsiung. These services will expand to Hong Kong and Macao as well as Singapore in 2018.
Acer is currently seeing rapid growth in the digital signage business and has recently participated in an AOpen’s private fundraising project and become a major shareholder of the digital signage firm. Chen believes Acer and AOpen’s partnership with help AOpen to save costs and become more competitive in the digital signage market.
Acer CEO Jason Chen outlines the company’s business plans
Photo: Shihmiin Fu, Digitimes, December 2017
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