Acer lowers Microsoft's reliance on: boosting Chromebook sales

Sina Science and technology news Beijing time, August 9 morning, in the second quarter after the loss of earnings, Taiwan PC manufacturer Acer said it would take positive measures to increase sales of Chromebook and Android mobile products, while reducing the number of Microsoft (32.89,0.83,2.59%) Windows dependencies. According to the Wall Street Journal, Acer's chairman, Wang, said in Thursday that he hoped that by the end of this year, the revenues of Android smartphones, tablets and Chromebook products would account for 10% to 12% of the company's total revenue, up to 30% next year. Reported that Wang did not disclose the use of Google (892.66,2.01,0.23%) operating system products, to the Acer contribution to the amount of revenue, but said Chromebook in the second quarter Acer's product shipments in the proportion of close to 3%. In fact, many PC manufacturers have shifted their strategy to reduce reliance on Microsoft and begin to focus on working with Google, which is only the latest case. Previously, as Microsoft's long-term hardware partner, Hewlett-Packard (26.87,0.18,0.67%) and Lenovo have defected, began to produce Chromebook. Acer is not the biggest hardware manufacturer, according to the US market research institute Gartner Data, by the end of last year, the company in the global Tablet and PC market share of 9%, but Acer in the process of Microsoft's release of Windows 8 played an important role. Acer's devices not only landed at Microsoft's retail stores, but were the first to launch a 8-inch Windows 8 tablet computer. Acer also cut prices on its tablet line to reverse the downturn, but there are indications that Acer's tablet is not growing as expected. Wang says consumers are now reluctant to buy windows devices. Acer is one of many Windows hardware vendors in trouble as PC sales continue to fall. Global PC shipments fell 11% per cent year-on-year in the second quarter of this year, according to IDC, a market research firm. Meanwhile, Tablet PCs in the second quarter surged nearly 60% per cent year-on-year. Acer and all other hardware vendors heavily reliant on PCs must focus on building Tablet PCs, industry insiders say. While many still stick to windows, a growing number of hardware vendors are turning to Google because their Windows tablet sales simply can't offset the loss of PC sales. Among Windows hardware vendors, Acer's transition to tablets seems to have achieved some success. In the second quarter of this year, Acer's PC shipments reached more than 6.2 million PCs and Tablet PCs shipped to 1.4 million, IDC data showed. In contrast, HP's second-quarter PC shipments were 12.4 million, but because of the small number of tablets shipped, IDC eventually had to put it into the "other" category. Sail)