Taiwans Acer Inc, the worlds third-biggest PC maker, expects to grow in Germany in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the head of its German unit told Reuters. "We have not experienced a slump in business in Germany," Stefan Engel said in an interview on March 03 during the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover.
"On the contrary: We have seen growth in January and February and are expecting to grow in the first quarter of 2009 compared with last year - this refers to unit sales and sales," he added but did not provide specific figures.
Acer in February said it expected its global PC market share to expand by 2-3 percentage points this year. The company had also said its netbook PC shipments in 2009 could be up to a third lower than its previous target, as demand has been curbed by the global market crisis.
For Germany, however, Engel said that the company is "highly satisfied overall" regarding its business with netbooks, but he did not provide further details. Netbooks - inexpensive and very small notebooks - were launched in 2007, and by now nearly all major PC makers have started production, including Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Lenovo.
"At the moment, I do not see (customer) restraint related to notebooks (either), but this may happen in the future. It depends on how the crisis will develop in Germany and whether there will be large insolvencies," Engel said. Engel added that this years decrease in the number of vendors at CeBIT - by about a quarter - is a general trend at the fair rather than solely a direct result of the current economic crisis.