Acer to buy major share in Packard Bell for Euro 31 M.

The Taiwan-based Acer Inc., the world's third-largest brand of personal computer, announced a move to spend euro 31 million buying 75% controlling stakes in PB Holding Company, a European PC vendor with its own brand Packard Bell, according to company sources.

The buyout is expected to help Acer to hold its third place against its Chinese counterpart Lenovo in market share rankings in the world.

Acer recently declared that its subsidiary Acer Europe B.V. and Gateway Inc., a U.S.-based PC brand newly acquired by Acer last year, have jointly acquired 500 common shares of PB Holdings and 30,000 Class B CPECs (convertible preferred equity certificates) and 7,000 Class C CPECs, totaling euro 31 million, or around NT$1.459 billion.

According to statistics compiled by Gartner, HP led the European market for PCs in market shares in the third quarter of last year. In the same quarter, Acer and Packard Bell respectively ranked No. 2 and No. 9, hardly threatening HP's leading position.

However and in the same market for notebook PCs, Acer commanded 23.6% share as the No. 1 brand in the last third quarter, and, if including Packard Bell, will further wide its lead over the runner-up HP in the market, based on the third-quarter sales data provided by Gartner.

On the other hand, Acer's ambitious moves to acquire Gateway and Packard Bell over the past year have helped the brand to outpace Lenovo in the race to become the third-largest PC brand in the world.

Back to few years ago, Lenovo's decision to purchase the PC division of International Business Machine Corporation (IBM) actually surprised quite a few industry insiders at the time. This made the brand succeed in becoming the world's No. 3 PC brand for a while.

To hold its leading position against Acer, Lenovo originally planned to buy Gateway; however, Acer got off to an earlier start than Lenovo to complete its acquisition of Gateway last year, smoothly unseating the latter as the third-largest brand. Furthermore, with the most recent buyout of Packard Bell, Acer has undoubtedly turned out to be the winner in the race.

According to data provided by Gartner, Lenovo tied Acer in terms of global market shares at 7.1% in the fourth quarter of 2006, and then trailed by a margin of 1 percentage point in market shares in 2007's third quarter. Thus, after purchasing Packard Bell, which commands around 1.5% of the global market for PCs at present, Acer is most likely to hold its third place in the world for 2008.

source & copyright: CENS