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ShareTaipei: Acer Inc, the world's No. 2 PC brand, expects its shipments of portable PCs to exceed 30 million units this year, chief executive Gianfranco Lanci said on Wednesday, broadly in line with 2008 sales.
Acer is currently the market leader in the low-cost netbook PC segment, a stripped-down laptop PC optimised for web surfing and other Internet activities, and No.2 in higher-spec notebooks.
Research firm IDC says Acer shipped about 32 million PC units last year, trailing Hewlett-Packard and Dell but sales suffered during the first half of 2009 as the global economic crisis weighed.
"We are seeing demand strong from all around, although there is weakness in eastern Europe," Lanci told reporters on the sidelines of an event organised by the economics ministry. "Of course, things are better than they were six months ago."
Lanci, speaking before Acer's third quarter investor conference on Friday, also said that a recall of over 12,000 laptop PCs in China would not have any impact on the company's operations in one of its fastest-growing markets.
Acer recalled 12,266 laptop PCs in China from its Aspire 3810 series made between April to September over the faulty microphone, China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement on Monday.
Acer shares ended 3.3% lower, lagging a 1.6 percent decline on the benchmark TAIEX share index. China currently accounts for about 5 percent of the firm's total revenue, Lanci said, up from about 3 percent about 18 months ago.
During the event, Acer Chairman J.T. Wang also told reporters he expected the company's shipments next year to outperform the overall market, while Lanci added that it aimed to be the No. 3 PC brand within the next two years in China.
Acer currently lags rivals such as Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard in the fast-growing Chinese market, which some analysts expect to overtake the United States as the world's largest PC market by users within a couple of years.
Research firm IDC says it expects global PC shipments to grow about 9 percent in 2010 from this year, as consumer confidence returns and following the launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system. In an interview with Reuters last week, Acer said it aimed to boost revenue by more than 70 percent over the next three years, while maintaining margins.
