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*LTD*

macrumors G4
Original poster
Feb 5, 2009
10,703
1
Canada
http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/06/27/acer.summer.notebook.shipments.drop.too/

Post-PC Era: Acer lowering notebook shipments too as iPad bites deeper

Acer's significantly lowered estimates include full-size notebooks as well, part suppliers divulged Monday night. The PC builder is now planning to drop its total notebook shipments from 6.4 million to 5.4 million. About 80 percent of the drop slipped out to Digitimes is the original netbook plan, but 20 percent will come from regular portables.

Shipments should hit nearly 1.5 million in July and climb to as many as two million notebooks in August with a similar amount in September. The move should be enough to purge Acer's excess stock.

The shortfall is partly attributable to the "abnormalities" the company reported earlier, where unsold stock in Europe is being cleared out at a discount. It's unknown if the lower figure reflects the overstock or if Acer's situation has worsened.

Acer's currently retired founder Stan Shih has largely confirmed the plans and blamed the slowdown on the company still adapting to the reorganization around mobile. The Taiwan PC builder is moving in the "right direction" and just needs more time for these changes to become visible, he says.

Once extremely dependent on netbooks, Acer is now mostly giving up on hopes of relying on it as more than a side business. Shipments are expected to remain steady but will center on cloud-focused users rather than the mainstream. Tablet shipments were already known to be flat at 800,000 in both the spring and summer but are helping to offset the losses.

The lowered notebook shipments can largely be blamed on the iPad. Apple's tablet has been mostly blamed for a steep drop in netbook sales for Microsoft as a whole as users either bought an iPad instead or decided to replace an existing netbook with a tablet instead.

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The evidence is really piling up. "Abnormalities" indeed. Denial is quite a strategy.

Then again, Acer isn't known for quality products to begin with. Look on the bright side, though: they're part of that 90% PC marketshare (not for long apparently.) They've made a wonderful contribution, haven't they?
 

shingi70

macrumors regular
Mar 14, 2010
160
0
The icona500 tab is decent for what it is. I think Assus is doing the best job at adapting making a great tablet overall and also giving it the optional keyboard/battery dock that makes it a laptop.
 

TheSideshow

macrumors 6502
Apr 21, 2011
392
0
So 20% of the loss is from regular notebooks... Doesnt seem to be very much at all.

200,000 less notebooks projected to be sold.

I still dont know anyone who has ditched a "PC" to make your Post-PC era anything significant yet.
 

Hellhammer

Moderator emeritus
Dec 10, 2008
22,164
582
Finland
Just because one OEM lowers shipments doesn't meant that iPad is behind it. If every OEM did the same, then we could say tablets are behind it, not just iPad. Acer has always been crap so this isn't a surprise.
 

ChazUK

macrumors 603
Feb 3, 2008
5,393
25
Essex (UK)
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; en-us; Google Nexus S Build/MIUI) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1)

Is the loss of a netbook sale really attributable as a step towards the post PC era?

I'd consider a steep drop in sales of real laptops and desktops as a step towards the post PC era but I've always considered netbooks as companion devices to "real" computers tho.

The iPad is certainly a force to be reckoned with in the netbook space, no doubt.
 
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