Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s third-largest computer maker, doesn’t expect to maintain this year’s rate of sales growth in Germany next year, said Wilfried Thom, head of Acer’s consumer business in the country.
“We are having a really unbelievable year,” and sales are going up, Thom said on Friday in an interview at the IFA consumer electronics conference in Berlin. “We don’t think we’ll have this kind of growth again next year, because both this year and last year we had strong growth.”
The company predicts sales will “consolidate” next year, he said. “That means that if you’re coming from 17 percent or 18 percent market share to 30 percent, it won’t continue to grow at the same pace.”
This week, the Taipei-based computer maker’s shares rose to a 3.5-year high in Taipei trading after it forecast laptop shipments may increase as much as 40 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months.
“At the moment the situation” for Acer in Germany “is much better than everybody expected six months ago,” Thom said. “The question is what happens in the third or fourth quarter, when unemployment is expected to rise.”
Currently, Acer has 19 percent of the overall notebook and netbook market in Germany, Thom said.
For consumer products overall, it has about one-third of the market, he said.
Acer’s business with companies has been much weaker than that with consumers. Recently, the number of government contracts for which Acer can bid has been growing, Thom said.
“There are a lot of offers we have to send out and that looks really good, but the private sector is still struggling,” he said.
Business-to-business sales makes up one third of Acer’s total revenue, Thom said.
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