Chicago (IL) - Acer is looking to supplant Hewlett-Packard as the number one notebook PC maker by 2011, and possibly 2010, according to Acer's Chairman, J.T. Wang. Currently the company is "neck-and-neck with Dell, Inc. for second place" with a 12% market share.





Wang believes an opportunity now exists to catapult his company into that number one slot. He says Acer's goals are aggressive, but Acer has increased PC shipments by 31% in Q4'2008 from the year before, and this in a declining market. Acer now owns 12% of the overall PC market, compared to 13% at Dell and 19% at HP (total of 44%).



He states that both U.S. and Japanese computer makers have "underestimated the demand for mininotebooks, or netbooks, lighter portable PCs that generally offer fewer features but also cost less." According to Acer, netbooks account for 30% of Acer's notebook sales. They expect the segment to increase to between 25 million and 35 million, which would be 15% to 20% of the company's total PC sales (not just in notebook space).



Wang said, "We found out that our American competitors are not aggressive in [the netbook] segment, but we think this segment is very big."



Acer is also branching out into the phone business. At the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Acer introduced its first smart phone. Wang believes this is an important move, stating "If we don't enter the [cell phone] market, then the cellphone makers will enter our market within three years."

Acer's touch-screen phones are black in design and closely resemble Apple's iPhone. They connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi. Acer's first models will be the DX900, X960, M900 and F900.



See The Wall Street Journal.