Gateway, Packard Bell Boost Acer to No. 2 in Laptops

Orange County Business Journal, Mar 17-Mar 23, 2008 by Tolkoff, Sarah

Wal-Mart Honors Vizio for TV Sales; Japan's DoCoMo Invests in Irvine Chipmaker WiSpry

TECHNOLOGY

With Irvine's Gateway Inc. and Europe's Packard Bell BV under its belt, Taiwan's Acer Inc. overtook rival Dell Inc. to become the second-biggest laptop PC maker during the fourth quarter.

No. 1 still is Hewlett-Packard Co., which kept the top spot for the fifth consecutive quarter, according to Austin, Texas-based market researcher Display Search.

HP sold nearly 7 million laptops during the quarter and has roughly 20% of the market.

No. 2 Acer shipped 5.3 million laptops and has 16% market share. With the recent acquisitions of Gateway and Packard Bell, Acer bumped up its laptop sales by more than 32% from a year earlier.

Earlier this year, the European Union gave Acer the green light to close its $26 million acquisition of Packard Bell, which sells PCs mainly in Europe.

Before last year's $710 million buy of Gateway, Acer had been a distant third to Dell in laptops.

"Acer overtook Dell when these acquisitions are included," said John Jacobs, director of notebook market research at DisplaySearch. "In the fourth quarter of 2005 and the fourth quarter of 2006, the volume gap between Acer and Dell was more than a million units. In the fourth quarter of 2007, that gap dropped to less than 100,000 units. When Acer's acquisitions of Gateway and Packard Bell are added to the equation, Acer passed Dell by more than 600,000 units."

Dell fell to third place with 4.6 million laptops shipped and 14% market share.

No. 4 is Japan's Toshiba Corp., which has its U.S. computer products headquarters in Irvine. It shipped 2.9 million laptops and had about 9% of the market.

Acer's longtime rival, China's Lenovo Group Ltd., came in fifth with about 2.7 million laptops shipped and 8% market share.

DisplaySearch estimates that more than 135 million laptop PCs will be sold this year.

Vizio Gets Wal-Mart Nod

Irvine's Vizio Inc., which markets and sells flat-panel TVs, is one of the most decorated young businesses in Orange County.

Two weeks ago, Chief Executive William Wang nabbed one of the Business Journal's Excellence in Entrepreneurship awards.

Last week, the nation's biggest retailer gave the company a thumbs-up.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. named Vizio its electronics supplier of the year for 2007.

Vizio got a big boost last year when it landed a deal to sell its low-priced TVs in Wal-Mart stores. The deal is one of the reasons why Vizio managed to be the top seller of flat TVs in North America for a good part of 2007.

Vizio started selling six TVs at Wal-Mart in May of last year.

During the eight months of 2007 that Vizio was on the shelves at Wal-Mart, most of its models were among the top selling flat-panel high-definition TVs at the retailer, the company said.

Down in DoCoMo

Irvine startup WiSpry Inc., which makes chips for cell phones, said it had a new investor take part in its latest $7 million round of funding.

Palo Alto-based DoCoMo Capital Inc., the venture arm of Japanese wireless phone service provider NTT DoCoMo Inc., joined WiSpry's second round.

WiSpry's previous investors also took part.

DoCoMo Capital got its start in 2005 and has roughly $100 million to invest in U.S. startups in the early to middle stages of product development. Its goal is to latch on to mobile phone technologies to launch in Japan.

WiSpry makes machines that are thousands of an inch in size and puts them on chips. The chips make a phone's signal to cell towers more efficient, allowing for fewer dropped calls and lengthening battery life.

The company has raised a total of $27 million.

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