In case you missed it, Acer has quietly worked its way up to No. 3 in the global PC market, no small feat. What we discovered in Budapest was that Acer has no intention of slowing down.
According to Acer, desktop PC growth year on year has shrunk to a miserable 1.7% while mobiles are up at 35%. On that basis, Acer speculate that desktops will return to their space saving place on the desk where they will be expected to perform at gaming levels while being quiet and innocuous; a far cry from the behemoth dust breeders that glow ominously under our desks for the now. That said, it seems mobile is where we can expect to see most of the action.
In addition to targeting the market leaders, specifically HP’s product spread and Dell’s successful online strategy, Acer are also taking shots at other players such as Asus and specifically the Notebook market. While it is very debatable, Acer hinted that they began development the Aspire One before Asus got cracking on the Eee but decided to hang back and wait for the Atom rather than release 16 different models. While the price of the One is borderline it certainly is a better quality machine, but will anyone care?
Acer then, have their PC bases covered at the top with the Predator and at the bottom with the Aspire One, but it’s what happens in-between that is very interesting. You might be acquainted with the Packard Bell brand, hopefully via some poor relative who got suckered into one from a retail store. Over the years they have improved vastly but for the longest time they were the bane of IT pros for holding out on desktops over towers, mystery components and insistence on making their machines semi-proprietary. This generally meant irreplaceable components, missing drivers and lots of swearing when they committed sewage pipe, plus they were butt-ugly.
Why this walk down memory lane? Well Acer has recently gobbled up Packard Bell as well as two other mediocre brands; Gateway and eMachines, but instead of slowly eating the competition they have opted for a multi-brand approach to the market. Multi-branding is not something that is often seen in the IT world but basically it involves keeping the respective brand’s identities and spreading them across every price point and market segment. In motoring terms it is akin to VW, Audi, Bugatti and a few more being part of one big company and while they do overlap at points they have blanketed the market. In this case; Packard Bell and Gateway will tackle the market segments who are concerned with so called style (yuck!), while Acer will be the premium brand across the board.
Despite our prejudice towards Packhard Bell, there is nothing wrong with their latest offerings especially some of their gaming rigs. Acer’s legendary support could most likely be applied to a rock and it would sell, so the blanket strategy could be a clincher.
Global domination aside, there is one product that eclipses everything else: the Predator. Unfortunately the local Predator launch was steeped in semi-naked models, COD4 and free grog. I am told that apparently there where machines on display too. Thankfully we have played with the Predator since then and simply put; it is out of this world.
Acer started off by trying to tweak existing hardware into something high performance; but as was to be expected, cooling became a major issue. In March of 2007 they commissioned their Taiwanese contingent to build an absolute monster, again with existing components. The results came back positive for fail and since it was too late for the 2007 market they decided to scrap the whole plan and start from scratch, this time however they got it right.
In October 2007 they went back to the drawing board with the modus operandi of cost being least important. What they came back was a water-cooled, Quad Extreme QX9650, Triple SLI (9800 GTXs) monster, complete with 8GB of RAM all housed in one of the sexiest cases we have ever seen. The entire system was made possible thanks to a custom motherboard and case that is so efficient that overclocking is not only possible but encouraged. But Acer didn’t stop there, their proprietary system and the warranty will gladly accept extra parts and upgrades even if they aren’t from Acer. Expect to pay around $5000 for the top of the range Eliminator although there will also be several different versions and price points, including the blue AMD setups. Look out for a review as soon as we get our mitts on one.
Go Baby, Go
One of the most notable statements made in Hungary was that computer gaming still eclipses the console industry. Since inception, personal computers have always been work tools first and enthusiast toys second. When a company like Acer boldly says the future of desktops is gaming and performance and supplies products like the Predator to back them up, we get all warm and fuzzy inside.