Acer CEO J.T. Wang knows how to run a company. All Things D is reporting that Wang told Dow Jones that the way to profitability will be through Ultrabooks, and to stop making affordable – yet poorly built – computers.
“We will shift our strategy to improving profitability from pursuing market share blindly with cheap and unprofitable products,” Wang said.
Well, it’s a strategy that’s worked for Apple over the past decade, although perhaps not so well for Sony’s Vaio division. But then again, Sony didn’t have the Ultrabook:
“Ultrabooks will become our key growth driver next year as customers want a lighter, thinner notebook with longer battery life. Selling more ultrabooks will also help improve our profit margins as they command higher prices.”
Here’s hoping the strategy works for Acer.
light487
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:03 AMAlienware have done well in this space.. but somehow I have doubts Acer will be able to pull it off unless they change their brand name. There’s just too many years of those, aforementioned, cheap products behind them for people to remember. They can still keep their Acer Aspires for the masses but come up with a new name, that isn’t Acer, for their new premium range.. might work.
MotorMouth
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:29 AMWhat? Alienware don’t even have an Ultrabook. Acer’s looks very cheap and nasty next to the Asus Zenbook, so they still have some work to do.
light487
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:33 AMI’m not talking about UltraBooks specifically.. I am talking about the pemium laptop/netbook/tablet/etc space. from what I understood from the article, Acer are looking at reducing their cheap/budget range and going for premium range of products.. like Alienware, Apple etc
Sam
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:58 AMAlienware’s focus was always aimed squarely at the gaming market. By nature it’s going to be a premium market – but it’s an entirely different sector.
Your argument is like saying “All sports cars are Ferrari’s” when it’s really the other way around – “All Ferrari’s are sports cars”.
vin
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:26 AMnot a fanboy, but it certainly sounds similar to Apple’s response to netbooks; ‘we dont know how to make a cheap product’…
pretty sure they’re mimicing the same strategy… which would really be good, i think… one way to target Apple’s price point for the product they’re offering..
Sam
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:55 AMAcer won most of their current marketshare off the back of netbooks – when it came to cheap and cheerful, they were already one of the best in the business at it.
As I said below,I very much doubt Acer as a parent organisation plans to drop “cheap” products from their line – they’ll just sell them under their child brands instead.
Drew
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:31 AMAcer has a decent name in the laptop space
Sam
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:53 AMTo be fair, Acer was pushing the ultra-thin-long-battery-life formfactor in laptops a couple of years back with their Timeline series – so moving more into this space is in a lot of ways is a natural progression.
The new strategy is definitely a good move for them – they already have eMachines and Gateway to flog off entry level products; so no doubt they can continue to cater for this sector of the market without tarishing (further) Acer’s brand name.
Christian
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:55 AMI like my acer a500 cheap and useful!
Peter Rogers
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 12:32 PMA full functioning Mac starting at $1,000 is what made the MacBook Air popular. Windows laptop are available for less than $1,000 so I don’t think ultrabook’s are going to be popular for PC’s. Where as if you want to buy into the Apple ecosystem at the most affordable price (in regards to laptops) the MacBook Air is your only choice. If Acer or others made a sub $1,000 dollar laptop running OSX then yes they would be extremely popular. You have to remember when you buy a Mac you know you are buying OSX so I don’t see how the PC industry is going to compete with the MacBook Air as people are buying it for both the hardware and the software combination.
Steve
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:03 PMThe MacBook Air is not ‘fully functioning’, no-one who uses a computer for more than light tasks can use a MBA as their primary computer. Weak, integrated graphics, no disc drive, small SSD, small screen and poor resolution. It’s a secondary device.
There are plenty of people who buy Apple laptops and run Windows on them, because they like the hardware but not OSX. I know my uni (Sydney U) does this in many departments with bootcamped iMacs. If you’re a power-user (eg gamer), you’ll nearly always be rather running Windows 7.
TheFoxMan
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 2:34 PMis ultrabook the only answer to the Apple air? Don’t the know that a thin sexy laptop is only half the battle, the OS is what sets the ultrabook and Air apart and if they keep jumping into bed with Microsoft it will continue to be this way.
Someone needs to come up with a polished linux and marry it with these Ultrabook to snatch market share away from Apple and PC vendors!
adrian
Friday, December 9, 2011 at 9:23 PMStop selling cheap unprofitable products? Do they mean they’re not selling anything anymore? Seriously their shit sucks