Acer CEO pinning company future on ultrabooks

From CNET News.com: As Acer's financial troubles mount, its CEO believes ultrabooks could be just what the company needs to return to profitability.

"Ultrabooks will become our key growth driver next year as customers want a lighter, thinner notebook with longer battery life," Acer CEO J.T. Wang told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview published yesterday. "Selling more ultrabooks will also help improve our profit margins as they command higher prices."

At one time, Acer seemed well on its way to becoming the world's largest PC maker, surpassing Dell in 2009 as its shipments soared. But over the last several quarters, things have changed for Acer.

According to research firm Gartner, Acer shipped 9.7 million PC units worldwide last quarter, earning it 10.6 percent of the market and putting it in fourth place behind HP, Dell, and Lenovo. Acer's total PC shipments were down a whopping 23.2 percent compared to the same period last year. It was a similarly disconcerting second quarter for Acer when the company shipped 9.1 million PCs, dropping 10 percent year-over-year.

Those shipment declines have caused sales to drop by 23.34 percent over the last twelve months.

Whether or not ultrabooks can actually reverse Acer's fortune, as Wang suggests, remains to be seen. Last month, Digitimes reported, citing sources, that both Acer and Asus have cut their ultrabook orders due to sluggish demand for the computers.

It isn't clear exactly why ultrabooks like the Acer Aspire S3 and the Asus Zenbook UX31 haven't been successful thus far. CNET senior editor Scott Stein thinks the problem is that most ultrabooks are largely indistinguishable from Apple's popular MacBook Air.

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