Acer’s second quarter (Q2) results for 2006 have come in, and they show blistering growth in China for the World No. 4 notebook maker.

Acer’s notebook shipments to the world’s fastest growing market have grown 200% on year so far, even though the 100,000 units it shipped in Q2 was 10% less than in Q1.

If Acer manages to keep this up, this year looks to be yet another golden year for the “title-chasers”. On a related note, it’ll also mark a further increase in Acer’s sales contribution from China - which has been steadily increasing.

[News via Digitimes]

(Source: NotebookReview.com)

As I wrote at the House of Dell on the 20″ Dell XPS M2010, huge notebooks aren’t cheap. In fact, they are expensive - even though Acer’s 20″ offering, the Acer Aspire 9800 isn’t anywhere as expensive as its Dell counterpart.

So, why is it that some consumers will still lap up the Aspire 9800 (and similiar laptops, no pun intended)? Well, according to USA Today, it’s precisely because of the “hugeness”, and thus, uniqueness of these niche notebooks.

Now, because of this uniqueness, not only does Acer get to place a premium on such niche notebooks, but it also gets to open new markets and build its reputation.

At least, that’s what USA Today says.

After Acer’s hard work in surpassing Toshiba to take the No. 3 spot in February this year (based on last year’s shipments), it seems such a shame that Acer has failed to retain that title due to their sub-par performance in the first quarter of this year.

According to recent data, Toshiba has narrowly reclaimed its title as the 3rd largest notebook vendor in the world (with 2.24 million laptops shipped in the Q1 2006 against Acer’s 1.95 million units), even though Acer aimed to inch closer towards the top two laptop suppliers instead.

This means that the current Top 4 laptop vendors are as follows: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Acer.

[News via Digitimes]

I’m not sure why I’m even posting about this since a cash back offer is just a discount with a funny name. But since I’ve already started, might as well follow this through.

Acer India has just launched a cash back program for its notebooks, where customers will be returned anywhere from Rs 1000 to Rs 3000 for each notebook they purchase. Customers can choose to claim this amount either as a conventional discount, or as a cash back.

This offer, coupled with Acer’s existing joint offer with Reliance India Mobile - where you get a LG Color speaker phone worth Rs 4499, plus 3 months of RConnect Internet usage for purchasing an Acer notebook - means that Indian consumers get one heck of a deal.

Of course, I’m pretty sure you wish you could trade in the LG Color speaker phone for even more discounts…

[News via Computer Reseller News]

(Source: Acer)

Alas, while nVidia will power HD-DVD playback, graphics card-wise, on the recently announced HD-DVD-enabled Acer Aspire notebook series, CyberLink will continue to be the media software provider for those notebooks. Under the Acer Arcade brand most Acer users (and reviewers) should be accustomed to, CyberLink will provide the all-in-one software necessary to play HD-DVD media.

We might seem a bit prejudiced here, but let’s just say we’ve found Acer Arcade to be little more than an annoyance so far - with dedicated software for individual media playback serving our purposes far better, even those from CyberLink itself.

However, this shouldn’t matter too much for those who were going to pump their notebooks with their own media playback software. For those who aren’t willing to spend some dough on dedicated software though… Acer Arcade really isn’t that bad…

(Source: NotebookReview.com)

If you remember the 500-hour battery life ECS notebook with an embedded mini-LCD display we featured earlier, you would also remember that we said that Acer would be putting up a similar component in place on their notebooks (probably when Windows Vista actually appears on the market).

What we were talking about then is known as a Personal Media Display (PMD) - a small LCD display placed on top of a notebook, allowing “always-on” access to simple functions of the notebook (e.g. reading e-mail) due to its low power consumption. Current models are based on PortalPlayer’s Preface technology and Microsoft Windows SlideShow (a Vista component), and so will Acer’s upcoming models.

This has been confirmed recently by an announcement by PortalPlayer that it will partner with Acer to incorporate its PMDs onto Acer’s upcoming notebooks.

However, no deadlines, release dates, or pricing details were revealed, though that really isn’t surprising given the lack of a proper release date on Windows Vista itself!

It shouldn’t be (significant) news to those following Acer’s progress that it will be keeping its notebook sales target unchanged (at 11 million this year) even as it stumbled in the first quarter. Aggressiveness is Acer’s forte, and we consumers should only be happy that PC vendors are fighting (on price and features) to keep their sales up.

What’s more interesting is Acer’s target of getting PDA phones out by the fourth quarter, and racking up US$1 billion of sales for that segment in 2008. There was talk late last year that Acer’s first PDA phone would be out by the 2nd half of this year, so taking that into account, Acer’s pretty much on track.

So far, rumors say that we’ll probably be looking at a 3G-enabled handset powered by Samsung internals and Windows Mobile on the O/S side of things. An interesting proposition, though pretty much unoriginal (deja vu anybody?). We can only hope Acer brings its specialties (low prices, strong features) to the fray this time.

[News via Digitimes]

Well, if I was a notebook retailer in China, I guess I would be seriously pissed at Acer’s so-called “notebook flooding” of China’s high-growth PC market. After all, it would mean I would actually have to compete on price, right? Why, as a vendor in China, I would probably not have had any problems with that before!

Anyway, you probably get my point by now, so I’ll quit my lousy attempt at sarcasm. According to recent statistics, Acer is currently the top vendor, with Asus close behind. However, due to the recent outburst from retailers and distributors in China over Acer’s “overaggresive” price points, Acer could probably be overtaken by Asus in the 2nd quarter, as Asus claims Chinese retailers will no longer cooperate with Acer.

In any case, according to the IDC, Acer shipped 115,000 notebooks in China during the 1st quarter - ranking 4th among notebook vendors there.

[News via Digitimes]