Report: Acer Threating Vendors To Keep Asus From Making Netbooks

Report: Acer Threating Vendors To Keep Asus From Making Netbooks

Chance Stevens 10 February 2010 1,032 views View Comments

Acer overtook Dell as the number two PC maker based on the strength of their netbook sales. Growth in the category has helped them dramatically increase market share. Defending this market share from other manufacturers becomes necessary at almost any cost. It looks like the only way to keep others from encroaching on their territory is to make sure other companies don’t work with the ones they work with.

Asus has big plans in 2010. They are planning on shipping 8 million Eee PC netbooks all over the world and to do that they’ll need to form partnerships with outsourced design manufacturers (ODMs) since they can only product so many netbooks on their own. This growth in their netbook segment would allow them to pass Toshiba and Lenovo as well as maintain a healthy lead over Samsung.

When Asus went to Compal, one of the largest ODMs in the world to get them to build up to 20% of their computers in 2010 they were informed that Compal would not be able to work with them. Acer who sells millions more netbooks (and other laptops) used their muscle to get Compal to decline Asus’ offer. Compal isn’t the only one. Many of the top tier ODMs are reconsidering working with Asus because of Acer. The second tier manufacturers are dying to work with Asus but the feelings aren’t mutual.

Unless Asus is able to strike deals they will find their costs increase which will cut into the profit they see on each unit they produce. This kind of monopolistic pressure is something we’ve seen in other areas of technology. The stories involving Microsoft are pretty prolific, and recently Intel had to pay AMD over a billion dollars for punishing people who would choose to work with AMD over Intel. There has been no formal inquiry but if it continues expect to hear more about this very soon.

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