Dec. 15, 2000

Acer Inc. plans to withdraw from the desktop computer market in the U.S., while increasing sales of notebook computers and self-brand products, Philip Peng, a senior vice president of Acer announced in Taipei.

The company plans to raise its revenue for products, especially notebook computers, sold under the Acer brand name to more than 50% in 2001 from the current 40%, he said.

However, the business outlook for the first quarter of 2001 won't be good for the computer industry, he told the local press.

Total operating losses of Acer are likely to reach US$ 20 million next year in each of its European and U.S. operations,. while its Central and South American operations will post a loss of about US$ 15 million.

Even so, Acer still managed to generate a pretax profit of NT$ 5.6 billion from its core Computer business during the January-September period of the year, already reaching 70% of its annual target, Peng noted. To counter recent negative press reports on the company's earnings prospect, Peng told reporters that Acer's forecast of pretax profit for 2000 still remained unchanged at NT$ 8 billion. ( 1 US$ = approx. NT$ 33 )