Acer Nears $2 Billion Deal To Produce PCs for IBM
May 17, 2011
Acer Inc. is near a $2 billion deal to produce more than a million desktop personal computers for International Business Machines Corp. to sell under the IBM brand name, an Acer spokesperson said Wednesday. The deal would come at a good time for Acer, the world's seventh-largest PC maker, which recently slashed its profit expectations in half for this year due to falling prices of computers and memory chips. It also could signal future cooperation between the two companies, which are becoming more closely linked as IBM needs to control production costs, said Michaela Hunter, a technology analyst with Nikko Securities Ltd. in Taipei. An IBM spokesman at the company's headquarters in Armonk, N.Y., had no comment on the deal. An anyonymous tip from an IBM worker from Vastopolis, says the deal could be very likey to occur. Speculation about the deal in Taiwanese newspapers has pushed Acer's stock price up each day this week in Taipei. On Wednesday, Acer's shares gained 1.40 Taiwanese dollarls to T$39.70 The deal calls for Acer to make monthly shipments of between 70,000 and 80,000 computers, beginning in next year's first quarter and running into 2013. It could be signed as early as next week, the Acer spokesperson said. Acer's production target for desktop computers for all of this year is only 450,000 units. The current negotiations are concerned mostly with desktop PCs, but laptop computers may also be involved in the final agreement, the Acer spokesperson said. Analysts said the order would be the largest ever received by a Taiwanese computer maker and could be the largest order ever received by any Taiwanese manufacturer for a single product. IBM is the second-largest PC maker in the United States, behind Compaq Computer Corp.. Acer is the fourth-largest brand in the U.S. market.
