Now Hear This!

It’s official. Taiwan-based Acer has closed its $710 million acquisition of Irvine, Calif.-based Gateway and, along with it, will snare Packard Bell B.V., a leading European PC vendor based in Paris that Gateway just delivered an offer for.

Normally, we at Electronic News don’t cover the closing of acquisitions, but in this case, an exception had to be made. When the ink dries on this one, Acer should become the third largest PC maker, slipping itself just above its PC market competitor Lenovo. Lenovo had also expressed interest in buying Packard Bell, but was beaten to the punch by Acer. 

With the move, Acer isn’t only securing its footing as the number three PC player, it’s accelerating its expansion in the United States where it had growth of more than 100 percent in Q3, according to IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker data released today. But despite Acer’s growth here in the U.S., volume in the United States was down from Q2 and roughly even with Q1 “suggesting Acer's U.S. expansion may face more pressure from competitors as volume grows,” IDC reports.

This also signals the continued loss of U.S. dominance in the PC world. HP and Dell may rank as numbers one and two, but for how much longer will they hold those positions? Dell, in particular, is slipping, not only in shipments but in customer image.

IDC’s latest statement on the PC market shows that while it continues to accelerate, the fuel for that acceleration is coming from EMEA and Asia/Pacific. And while Acer’s Gateway acquisition may appear to be focused on the U.S. marketplace, the company is using it to take a more global approach to this new PC supply chain, scoring a well known brand -- Gateway once being a top three PC maker itself -- and snatching up a European vendor in doing so.

What are your thoughts on the acquisition and the global PC market? Share them by posting a comment below.

--Suzanne Deffree, News Editor