Acer officially lands Packard Bell

Through a rather circuitous route, Acer finally brought home the prize it had long been eyeing: European PC vendor Packard Bell.

The Taiwan-based computer maker officially purchased 75 percent of Packard Bell parent company PB Holdings for $48.5 million, according to a statement made to the Taiwanese Stock Exchange Thursday, PC World is reporting.

Acer has been the fastest growing PC company in the world over the last year, rising through the ranks to become the No. 3 PC vendor at the end of 2007, with 8.9 percent of the overall market, according to research firm Gartner.

It's also set about making its presence known, scooping up U.S. PC maker Gateway in August for $710 million, and declaring its intentions to snatch Packard Bell even when rival Lenovo also publicly expressed interest. Buying Gateway was key for Acer to get the much-smaller Packard Bell, since Gateway possessed the right of first refusal, or right to make any counter offer if another company tried to buy it.

Why Acer wanted the small PC maker with a negligible market presence outside Europe so badly seemed puzzling to some initially. Now the move is seen as a smart defensive strategy to block any attempts by rival Lenovo from increasing its presence in Europe.

[www.hdgreetings.com]

How much?

How is Packard Bell worth $50MM?<br /><br />I can see buying a good brand but they leave nothing in my mind except memories of old, cheap computers that were never anything special.

[`WarpKat]

Interesting

The rise of Packard Bell brings back memories of <br />Sears saturating their electronics department <br />with units in the box.<br /><br />It also brings back memories of the allegations <br />of used components in the computers.<br /><br />In addition to being gawdawful slower than a <br />386SX.

[Andy kaufman]

Acer owns Packaged Hell?

Packard Bell computers were the most low quality, cheapest, with rebates that never arrived, piece of s*** computers that ever existed. The only computer brand that was worse than Apple during the 1990's. People had hopes that Packard Bell would go the way of Commodore and go out of business.<br /><br />Anyway eMachines replaced them eventually in the USA, but I see PB went to Europe.

[pugster]

Packard bell did okay in Europe

Packard Bell's bad reputation didn't spread to Europe after it stopped producing pcs in the US. In fact, they did pretty well there whereas Acer is an unkown brand. Just like Acer buying Gateway so that they can producing pc's here in the US, they are making pc's under Packard Bell name in Europe.

[JuggerNaut]

Packard Bell, Dell and eMachines!

Ah yes, the three musketeers of low quality computing :-)

[sshoemaker]

Packard Smell is a prize??

Not that I'm bashing them (because I'm in the IT field because my first PC was a PB!) -- hence why I'm in the IT field -- BECAUSE IT SUCKED!!! It was THE WORST computer I have ever owned and since I had to work on it almost continuously over the 3 years that its pathetic life lasted I had to learn how to do things (since 2 hours on hold for tech support was nothing)!<br /><br />I have always thought Acer was cheap anyway and Gateway never interested me -- to many other people with bad experiences with both. Dell is the other cheap b******s who came out with great pc's at first and then started putting in crap for parts after they got a good reputation -- and now "everyone wants a Dell" right? WRONG!<br /><br />This is just another step towards having to build our own computers for the rest of our lives if we want a quality machine!

[may269may]

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