Acer has adopted a channel-only policy – it does not sell direct to end-users. This was a key factor in the rise of Compaq in the eighties and early nineties. But nowadays, in a maturing market, channel-only PC companies are as rare as hen’s teeth. In the developed world PC vendors make market, not resellers, and they are just as happy to sell direct, if the custom and the profit warrants it.
So Acer’s channel-only policy may be a throwback, but the policy is reaping dividends.
The company was early into notebooks and this is also paying off in a big way, especially in Europe, which accounts for about half of the company’s expected $20bn revs in 2008. That’s right, twenty billion dollars generated by 5,500 staff, flogging 30 million units through computer dealers and retailers. In the first half of the year, the company grew four times faster than the global market, thanks to acquisitions as much as organic growth.
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