Acer sees PC consolidation speeding up
MADRID (Reuters) - The personal computer industry is in for a wave of consolidation, the president of Acer (2353.TW) said on Friday, adding the Taiwanese PC maker did not plan any buys itself for up to two years.
Taiwan's Acer has been one of the main movers in the PC sector in the last few months, offering to buy U.S. group Gateway GTW.N for $710 million in August to leapfrog China's Lenovo and become the world's number three computer maker.
In turn, Gateway said it would exercise its right to take a first attempt at buying the parent of Paris-based PC maker Packard Bell BV, which had been courted by Lenovo.
"Consolidation in the PC industry is continuing and will speed up. We see only a few major players in the industry," President Gianfranco Lanci told a news conference in Madrid.
Lanci said the acquisition of Packard Bell through Gateway would go ahead, adding he thought Acer could do a good job in integrating the three companies.
"We're going to be busy consolidating the acquisitions we have made for the next 12 to 24 months so I don't see us doing anything (more) in that period," Lanci said.
Even with the Gateway deal, Acer still stands well behind market leaders Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N) and Dell (DELL.O) and is still fighting head-to-head with Lenovo, which bought IBM's (IBM.N) PC business in 2005.
Lanci said Acer expected its growth this year to be similar to 2006.
"We saw revenue growth of about 30 percent last year, and this year will be about the same, with our margins stable at 10 point something percent," Lanci said.
