Acer is witnessing a turnaround in its business in Australia, having reported a profit of A$24M for a third consecutive quarter with the PC company releasing new notebooks and a large all in one PC, looking to take on Lenovo in the PC market.
The profit was achieved after cost cuts, though revenue continued to fall as the global market for personal computers contracts.
In the same quarter Acer’s global market share grew to 8.4% from 7.4% a year earlier.
Acer, the world’s fourth-largest PC maker by shipments, has steadied its business this year with a new management team after three years of losses. The company was hit particularly hard as consumers shifted to mobile devices.
The A$24M profit followed a record NT$13.1 billion net loss a year ago.
Its operating margin was 1.3%, compared with 0.8% in the second quarter and negative 2.8% a year earlier.
Acer Chief Executive Jason Chen was recruited from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing at the beginning of the year, and has since cut costs, partly via layoffs and slashing executive salaries, to return the company to profit. He joined after Acer’s top two executives resigned after taking responsibility for continued losses.
In the third quarter, Acer and other major PC players benefited from market consolidation as smaller competitors retreated from the market, according to market-research firm IDC.
Shipments grew for Acer and its larger rivals Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and Dell even as the total market shrank by 1.7%.
Steven Tseng, an analyst at Taiwanese brokerage Daiwa, said Acer has sold more low-cost Chromebooks this year than in the past, in an effort to boost volume and gain scale.
Acer’s founder has said the company is developing cloud-computing services, and will begin selling at least one product next year.
Acer also announced this week that they have it promoted Jerry Kao to president of its core notebook business group, where he was a general manager. The notebook business had been overseen by Jackson Lin, chief technology officer and president of Acer’s design centre, who will now focus on research and development.
