Acer boss sees trouble ahead

LAPTOP SALES WILL SLOW according to Acer's Stan Shih who has been predicting a downturn in laptop market growth.

Shih said that Taiwan's quick-growing manufacturing industry is going to face a growth decline. He told Digitimes that Acer, which is focusing on hardware products, needs to reorganise for when that happens. Acer has already experienced a "golden 10 years" since it spun-off of Wistron, he said.

But Shih thinks that the outfit will need to strengthen its software and services arm. If the outfit counts on hardware products it will eventually get stuck in a bottleneck.

He explained that while Apple's software platform was a successful example, Acer needs to come up with its own plans.

Unsurprisingly he thinks China will become the largest PC market worldwide in the future and that Acer will need to speed up its advance to become the second-largest brand to have a chance of winning. µ