Acer says Vista not helping PC sales much

Acer is cutting its sales forecast and it is blaming the shortfall on a smaller-than-expected boost from the release of Windows Vista, Taipei Times reported Friday.

Acer Chairman Wang Jeng-tang on Thursday told shareholders that company revenue for the year "will grow 30 percent to 40 percent compared to last year" and that Vista hadn't affected PC sales as positively as expected. Previously, Acer had expected greater than 40 percent growth. (Standard disclaimer: things often get lost in the translation in media reports from Taiwan, so you may want to take the report with a grain of salt, rather than as gospel.)

Vista was released with much fanfare in January, but it's not clear that the availability of the new operating system has helped PC sales. Though some waited to buy a new PC until after Vista was released, the majority of buyers don't buy a PC because of a particular operating system, according to a report released by In-Stat last month.

With sales greater than $11 billion in 2006, Acer has been a rising star in the PC industry. The Taiwanese company has made great strides in a short amount of time, most recently displacing Lenovo as the world's third-largest PC maker, capturing 6.8 percent of the global PC market, according to market research firm iSuppli.

[MaLvaDo39]

Flattery

Now why would an upside-down, backwards copy of Apple's OS X
cause the world to rush out and buy PCs to run Vista?

Once the world actually USES a Mac, then you'll see sales increase
more-so... and it won't be PCs.

[krushyou]

The world may never know.

:looks at headline:

Hm, that's funny it doesn't say APPLE ANYWHERE in the article nor does it have anything to do with Apple.

The only thing that you may be able to say MS copied off of for Vista is the Aero theme, thing is they used a new graphic presentation to get rid of the pixelation in graphics that has been an issue in all versions of Windows.

Apple copies as well (Xerox anyone?)

Widgets were around long before Apple incorporated them.

Safari looks strangely similar to firefox.

Apple = BSD with a pretty gui, who's copying who?

Linux has Wine and a lot of the distros are setup with a Windows like theme.

The fact of the matter is EVERYONE copies everyone, if it has been done, it can be done better and can always be improved upon.

All operating systems have their strengths and weaknesses.

Use whatever OS you want, but don't go on here flaming a company with your fanboyism when the article is talking about sales for a pc.

[Vinhasa]

Sigh, Mac not perfect...

I, as well as many people I know have used Macs, including the recent OS X. The biggest problem I have with it is the lack of software, especially on the entertainment side. Unless that changes I will continue to purchase PC's sand deal with the Microsoft/Linux issues I put up with now (Mircosoft:Simple, but somce with serious issues; Linux:Complex and mitigated issues if you have the skill, but if you don't more serious issues than Microsoft.)

[lleather]

Get what you deserve

The vista release was alot like our government...lots of promises but little performance. I ripped it out after using it for ninety days...too many bugs and got tired of dealing with them.

But then again, what does Microsoft call a beta tester? End User!

[shane--2008]

helping?

if i used a PC i would get one fast while i could still get XP on it!

vista is craptastic!

[gdcox]

Acer and Vista

Acer should have copied Dell which smartly offer the choice of Vista or XP.