CE-Oh no he didn't! Part LXVI: Acer founder predicts extinction of US PC makers within 20 years
By Vlad Savov 
posted January 19th 2010 6:28AM
posted January 19th 2010 6:28AM
posted January 19th 2010 6:28AM
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It's funny to see a prediction saying US PC market will be dead soon from the mouth of a person who created the crappiest laptop brand I've ever experienced in my life. I've tried 8 laptops for the last 6 years or so: 2 HP, 2 Asus, 2 Acer, 1 Gateway, and 1 Samsung. Without a doubt, Acer was the cheapest and the crappiest. I would choose HP or Gateway over Acer any day, not because I like HP or Gateway, but because they're actually better than Acer.
Gateway is now owned by Acer. Welcome to 2010.
both Acer and Asus have a great line-up right now with their Timeline and Ul-30 series. Acer dominates Europe right now in the consumer space. I think Stan Shih has a point that the taiwan producers finally haven become true OBM's and not just ODM's. But they still need to build up the reseller and driect sales channels in the US and in Europe. US firms are pretty good at marketing also, and branding was and is still a large part of selling. The pc have become a Consumer Electronic device , where not many years ago it was a business product that some tried to sell to consumers. But America still have a large part in the computer biz. *Who makes 100% of all the CPU that make up a substantial part of the price of a pc? Intel Who makes all most 100% of all the software operating systems of the PC biz? Microsoft. Not until consumers will accept non-intel and non-ms pc systems will America be threatened in the pc biz. An ARm baes snapdragon with a linux variant might do it, but we will have to see it first.
@daskino The funny thing about that is even if the Snapdragon - ARM chip does take off and overtake Intel on the mobile front it will still be financially benefiting a US company. That company being Qualcomm (based in San Diego), the designers of Snapdragon architecture.
@kceezy
he he did not know that, quite funny
Sony was right, it's now a race to the bottom. I think I'm the only one who thinks it's a terrible thing. I like my high-end, high powered desktop with multiple 24" monitors. I like my LED 13.3" notebook with high end components and a fast processor.
Low end computers are garbage, and it's a shame they're starting to dominate the industry.
@Ngamer
You're not the only one. I feel the exact same way. Fortunately, I think the high-end market will still exist for people like us. We may have fewer options and/or have to pay more for it, but if even companies like Goldmund can continue to exist, I don't think high-end PCs which are arguably much more reasonable than Goldmund equipment will disappear.
But yes, it scares me that people now seem to be more considered with cost rather than value. What scares me even more is that some people don't seem to understand the distinction between those two terms anymore.
@Ngamer
"...people now seem to be more **concerned** with cost rather than value."
This statement completely lacks vision, which is funny because it's coming from an ex-Chairman of a large corporation. With what we know about the direction cloud computing is taking us, nobody should expect that the desktop or the laptop will still be anywhere as relevant in 20 years as it is now. Here's a prediction. If Acer is still making desktops and laptops 20 years from now, they'll be extinct too.
The difference between the TV situation and the PC situation is outsourcing.
Put another way, which US PC maker do we have right now? No one's PC is actually made in the US already, same as TVs.
Since everyone outsources their production, the overhead of PC makers is similar enough that I can't see why "US" PC makers would ever go away.
Until Asia starts providing the software I think we're good.
I think it's fair enough. Asians are smaller and so the are closer to the circuit boards when they are being made. So they can see what they are doing better.
@Beamo
im an asian, i came from asia and now live in nyc. im relatively taller than most of ppl here. Keep in mind asians are not all short. you are just buying into the stereotypes. typical americans.
@cphu Sorry fella but you've clearly not seen Crazy People http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099316/ which is where that comes from. No offense amigo.
@Beamo
Eureka! That's why goblins and gnomes are the technological innovators of the world (of Warcraft)... right?
Without the US companies responsible for system software and chip fabrication, Chinese PC assemblers would have nothing to sell, cheaply or otherwise.
@good grief BINGO!
@good grief
yeh maybe not chinese, but taiwanese, japanese, and korean all have their own chip fabrication facilities and innovation capabilities, since acer is taiwanese, there's certainly a truth to what he says.
@good grief
Taiwanese VIA already OWN Centaur Technology (US based) which designs the VIA C7 chip for them.
The Japanese has historically beaten American on CPU design front (Remember the Earth Simulator? That was NEC SX-6 chip which reign as champ for several years as the most efficient CPU and powerful CPU ever; Also PS2's EMOTION ENGINE)
The Chinese already designed several of its own CPUs - the most well known one is the Loongson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson) - while they are still lagging quite a bit behind in term of performance, they are catching up in light speed (considering they had absolutely no computer industry 20 years ago and progressing to only few years behind).
@good grief
And the Chinese have their own rockets and will soon reach the moon and steal all the trade secrets and technologies America hid there, uh, wirelessly beamed there for safe keepings.
I hope ASUS kills them. Asus is the best computer company in reliability and pricing. Just sayin, hope ASUS wipes the floor with Acer.
If HP goes "extinct" which would pretty much never happen as they are the largest manufacturer of technology in the world, and Acer became the biggest manufacturer of computers we would all be f***ed!!
Every computer would be a cheap piece of crap that broke regularly and was impossible to get fixed due to the fact that you can't get a hold of anybody for tech support.
But seriously now.... Acer's CEO is an idiot. That is like Apple saying in 20 years Samsung will be extinct. HP is the largest manufacturer of TECHNOLOGY, not just computers. How is a company that has over 12% marketshare less than HP going to pass them when consumers know Acer's are crap? I sell computers for a living and trust me customers have called Acer's every swear word you can think of.
I concur with others that America is best positioned to compete on quality, not price. I love Apple products, for example. Good hardware, energy efficient, good speakers, great LED-backlit screen, innovative trackpad, awesome bundled software, etc. give it the edge over competitors in my mind, but Dell doesn't differentiate themselves from Acer in similar ways to me.
In fact, the last Dell laptop my work let me use was a slow, troublesome PC (as many brands of PC are), and the experience I had with it didn't help sell me on the brand.
@ColinMcGraw You love Chinese made Apple products.
@aztek Point taken and I wish Apple products were made in the US, but the discussion is over American vs. foreign-headquartered companies (e.g. HP & Dell vs. Acer) who all manufacture their wares in Asia (sadly).
At least Apple takes pride that their products are engineered in California, as they make a point to note in all of their product packaging.
@ColinMcGraw If Apple products were made in the US... How would you even buy them? How would Apple ever get its 30 percent profit margin (and as far as I know, they need it to support the development of their operating system, correct me, if I'm wrong) on computers?
But what else has happened here in the US? We wanted more money and to work fewer hours. China won't be able to keep people working too many hours for little compensation forever and when that happens, they will have happen what is happening in the US: Jobs going to the next developing country that has cheap labor, their goods get more expensive and they slowly begin to layoff manufacturing employees to cut costs.
Oh humans. Will we ever learn?
@aztek I'm not sure it's ever been about "fewer working hours" in practice. We're working more than ever!
Rather, I think it's a matter of Americans wanting marginally more stuff, and that greed (at both the shareholder, executive and consumer levels) leads to jobs flowing out of the country to places where sweatshop workers labor in factories with little to no controls on pollution and working conditions.
It interests and frightens me to see the end result if the trend continues.
why ppl always think taiwanese are chinese and rant about how chinese are taking over the world? and come on, japanese have been buying ur companies since the 80s, nothing will go wrong for more asians to own your companies. if you want to pick US up, study more and watch tv less!!
@cphu This is so true. I'm glad you brought this up. People forget that Japan was buying US company's left and right during the 80's and 90's and US citizens were freaking out then just like they're freaking out now. People seriously need to lay off the drama.
@cphu "why ppl always think taiwanese are chinese"
I am NOT Chinese, or Taiwanese, or any kind of Asian, but I think it's alarming, and embarrassing that this mistake is made so often. Part of it probably has to do with the whole UN crap of recognizing ROC as the ruling gov't of China, and then later reversing the decision.
@XChrisX
In regards to China not developing their own software: that is just crap. So much code is developed in China and Taiwan right now. The difference between the U.S. is that relatively few software products are exported from these countries. Countless drivers, OS patches, middleware, and applications are all completely designed and developed in these countries. For example, the realtek drivers that drive your integrated audio, or the OS running on my ZyXEL router, or even pieces of the BIOS running on your ASUS motherboard. Any reliance they have on software developed elsewhere is likely a result of: a lack of return on investment, too much risk, or a desire to get a very short time to market, in other words, good business decisions. It is not an inability to do it themselves.
I'm sorry that none of this has any relevance to the real issue being discussed.
Hah! Stan may think the US can't compete on cost, but you just wait. At the rate our currency is being devalued, it will soon be on par with the Peso, and the world will come begging for our cheap American labor!
@golfnz34me
'd love to see you on the frontline of that cheap labor force.
Of course he would say something like that.
Only the upper 10% in China (over 100 million, but still) make salaries over $7000. Theres a lot of people working hard in Acer factories making far below what we consider minimum wage here. Our national median salary still hovers in the mid 40s. $40000. Of course we can't make things at dirt cheap prices, the value of our labor isn't competitive.
However, there are plenty of really cool things we CAN make and still be competitive globally with our higher salaries. Cool things like solar panels, pebble bed nuclear reactors, composite airliners, space-transport systems...
Fine, we might not be the global source of low-cost electronics. I can live with that as long as we're making far bigger dreams a reality.
@JZeke
"Cool things like solar panels, pebble bed nuclear reactors, composite airliners, space-transport systems..."
Just want to point out that one of the world's largest (3rd largest in last count) solar panel supplier/original designer is Suntech - which is based in China. The founder was educated in Australia's defence university and got his PHD in solar panel research. Pity that Australian government didn't want to give him the funding to continue his research - and he got fed up and went home. Now he owns world's 3rd largest solar panel company in the world.
@DeeeCoder
Damnit! We gotta be able to make SOMETHING cool thats competitive. wth.
Acer really shouldn't be oin the top 3. in fact it should be one of the last companys IMO. their stuff breaks down so easily it's ridiculous.
What's so bad having no American PC makers? So what if the majority of TVs are made in Asia. It hasn't stop Americans from buying a decent TV. I don't see the problem here, some regions make better products than others. You don't go to Italy for Eggrolls and fried rice, you go there for their Pasta and pizza.
There's no shame in Asia being tech manufacture of the world. US has plenty of other markets they can dominate, such agriculture and industrial machinery.