Acer: Tablet market very disappointing

The PC market is slow, but tablets are worse off. It also explains why Samsung won’t touch HP’s PC division with a 10’ barge pole.

Acer (TPE:2353) shares stopped trading briefly in Taiwan this morning as they hit what is called “limit low”, indicating that the stock exchange has a severe imbalance between buyers and sellers.

The reason is the very disappointing outlook from one of the world’s largest notebook vendors.  Acer sees the growth in the PC market slowing down, but what is probably even worse is the fact, that tablets apparently are not a major hit in China.

Acer sees lots of dark tablet clouds on the horizon. They expect a lot of first time buyers will buy a tablet but then won’t upgrade the hardware in the foreseeable future leading to very sluggish long term sales.  This fact combined with a weak PC market certainly also explains why Samsung earlier today felt compelled to tell the world that it has no interest what so ever in the PC business that HP desperately is trying to spin off.

While trying to stay clear of the PC business, Samsung is launching new and cheaper smartphones in an effort to capture the growing Chinese market, where smartphones are very trendy, but the buying power is limited.

At the same time Freescale, the former semiconductor division of Motorola, is trying to make inroads in China by offering their chips to white box vendors in China. Instead of going after major branded customers, Freescale is trying its luck with unbranded white boxes.  Welcome to the next wave of market consolidation.S|A

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