Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci, at a press conference for Taiwan-based media in New York, stressed that faced with increasing competition for tablet PCs in the global market, Acer takes a fearless attitude and will avail itself of relative advantages to strive to attain the largest global market share in 2-3 years. Following are highlights of a Q&A session with Lanci.

Q: The sales performance of iPad is outstanding and Samsung Electronics has launched tablet PCs and additionally been competing with Acer in notebooks, smartphones, etc., what is your view of such a trend?

A: While iPad has gained successful sales performance and good market response, Apple is centered around the US market with a significant leading status, but its competitive strength may not play out in emerging and other markets, this is the opportunity for Acer. Sales of iPad pushed forward very fast initially, but have slowed down in the past few weeks. Samsung is a main rival and will continue to be so. Samsung used to focus on consumer electronics, and its entry into the PC market entailed significant adjustments in its supply chain, inventory management and retail channels. This is the basic difference between Samsung and Acer, and Acer has advantages in PC operational experience and our channel network.

Q: Will the brand competition with Samsung influence Acer's strategies for component procurement?

A: Of course. Faced with such a rival, Acer has to factor in many considerations in an attempt to prevent Samsung from obtaining advantages.

Q: What are PC and handset vendors' relative advantages in the tablet PC market? Do handset vendors have a lead for the time being?

A: Acer is globally the only tablet PC vendor that offers many sizes and solutions. Viewing that handsets feature voice communications while table PCs focus on data communications, tablet PCs are closer to PCs than to handsets. In addition, PC vendors have another advantage in that most tablet PCs are marketed through IT retail channels rather than handset channels.

Q: Are vendors' ideas about tablet PCs now totally different from those in the past? What are Acer's goals?

A: The differences are, firstly there is no standard platform for tablet PCs; secondly the integration of platforms with content is essential, and this is the reason Acer will keep expanding our software R&D staff, and why we have announced our "alive" online content platform which will improve the user experience and increase loyalty to Acer. Because content should be localized, we will have teams responsible for providing localized content services in each country. Compared with competitors, Acer has the advantage that our annual shipments of 40-50 million PCs are large enough to attract content providers into negotiations. We hope our tablet PCs can reach a global market share of 10-20% initially, and become the market leader in 2-3 years.

Q: What is your outlook on the global PC market and Acer's operation?

A: Acer expects its consolidated revenues for the fourth quarter to increase 5-10% on quarter, as was indicated at our most recent investors conference. Current market conditions show that there is large demand in emerging markets, including China, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia, while there is no real growth in demand in the US and Europe. The trend will remain over the next six months. The recent military conflict between North and South Korea will not have any substantial impact on the PC industry. However, the current foreign exchange war will continue with the expectation that the US will keep pushing down the dollar and its exchange rate against other currencies will continually fluctuate. Acer has maintained optimal hedging strategies against such risks and will do so on the principle of neither losing nor gaining from foreign exchange.

Q: What is the latests developments in Acer's alliance with Founder in the China market? Does Acer have any merger plans for the next 3-5 years?

A: Founder Technology's staff of 700 members has joined Acer, such a size is suitable and the integration of both sides' resources is progressing well. There will be some products launched under the Founder brand in the first quarter of 2011. Acer has witnessed strong growth in the China PC market, recording the second largest market share of 14% for consumer PCs and an Acer-Founder combined share of 12-13% for all kinds of PCs in October 2010. Acer expects to better benefit from the integration in 2011. We have an open attitude to merger opportunities, we have looked at some possibilities but no feasible opportunities are available for the time being.

Q: What are Acer's plans for the enterprise market?

A: Acer has scored some points in marketing servers since 2008-2009, and will unveil business-use notebooks and desktops in the first quarter of 2011. The market segment accounts for 25% of Acer's consolidated revenues currently and the proportion is expected to increase to 30%.

Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci at press conference in New York
Photo: Yen-Shyang Hwang, Digitimes, November 2010