Taiwan-based vendor Acer has lowered prices for existing notebook models in emerging markets, including Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Philippines, Indonesia and some countries in South America, to clear inventories, with the price cuts putting competitive pressure on Taiwan-based second-tier or white-box vendors in these markets, according to sources from Taiwan-based notebook ODM/OEMs.

Sources from retail vendors pointed out that Acer's action has messed up the pricing of the notebook market, causing difficulties for notebook brand vendors to set their notebook prices, while turning distributors to take a cautious attitude over importing notebook products.

In addition with Hewlett-Packard (HP), which has already been selling its notebook inventory at slashed prices in the past few months, the notebook market's ecosystem has already been changed by the top-two notebook players and therefore, channel retailers are mostly taking a cautious attitude toward the changes.

Asustek Computer previously pointed out that the company has been seeing its competitors dumping inventories to retail channels with an extremely low price, causing the retailers to sell mostly competitors' products. The sources pointed out that if a vendor like Asustek is experiencing the problem, the affect on the second-tier vendors should be much stronger.

However, the sources believe after the top-tier vendors finished digesting their inventory in May or June, the notebook market ecosystem should return to normal with shipments after the third quarter to have a chance of performing regularly.

Acer and HP
Photo: Terry Ku, Digitimes file photo