Acer calls for profit levelling
Fair shares for all
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Acer's president has called for a fairer division of the spoils in the PC industry this morning, but stopped short of pointing the finger at any profit hoggers.
Gianfranco Lanci, kicking off the vendor's press beano in Madrid, trumpeted the company's progress in recent years, which has seen it take the top spot in notebooks in Europe, finally break into the top five in the US, and take the number three spot worldwide.
But he bemoaned the fact that even though Acer is producing consistent operating profits of three to four per cent, any other industry would consider this a disaster.
"The distribution of profitability in the industry is very questionable," he said.
"A few people are making all the profit. Others are struggling."
However, he predicted this would change as factors other than raw Gigahertz came to the fore. With an increased focus on energy consumption, he said form factor - something the PC vendors have more control over - will come to the fore.
However, Lanci demurred when it came to identifying exactly who was hogging the profit. When asked by one journalist how he proposed to "put the squeeze on Intel", he replied: "I didn't say that and I'm not going to answer. I don't want to put the squeeze on anyone." ®
COMMENTS
Hogging profits?
Seems to me he'd be referring to Dell. Dell put me out of the white box PC business and many others as well. Profits aren't going to be "fairly distributed" in any industry, as whoever can generate the highest amount of sales and the most profits will lead the profit wars, however, consistent performance of 5% profit is not a bad thing and Acer is executing, whereas Dell is stumbling.
If we're really talking about AMD vs. Intel as far as chips are concerned, none of us have a say in that. Intel leads and AMD follows until AMD gets momentary momentum to scare Intel into producing superior chip architecture. The thing that does actually give AMD a leg up on Intel is their acquisition of ATI. In time, that "holy union" will bear fruit, especially in the notebook PC segment, which continues to grow and challenge the Desktop segment, if it hasn't overtaken it already.
Economics?
So nothing at all to do with the fact that Intel and AMD effectively own the chip industry so can charge a hefty premium whereas laptop manufacturers are a dime a dozen?
To make more profit they simply have to put their prices up, but then they wouldn't be able to compete against all the other laptop manufacturers who are perefectly happy with profits of only 5%
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