For Acer and Asustek, holding their places among the world’s top PC vendors came at a cost. The two Taiwanese companies each lost ground in a market where the overall number of machines shipped actually grew.
Gartner’s 2019 rankings, released January 26, show Acer shipped 14.76 million units, good for fifth place. Asustek moved 14.48 million units and held sixth. But their slices of the global pie shrank. Acer’s market share fell from 6.1 percent to 5.7 percent. Asustek’s dropped from 5.9 percent to 5.5 percent.
That half-percentage-point erosion matters. In a world market of roughly 261 million PCs — that’s the implied total based on the reported figures — a 0.4 percent share loss equals more than a million machines. Revenue and profit follow those numbers down.
Meanwhile, the leaders pulled away. Lenovo shipped 62.97 million PCs. HP moved 57.92 million. Dell took third. Those three companies, along with Apple in fourth, control the narrative. Acer and Asustek are fighting for scraps below them.
Gartner senior principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa said the overall market grew 0.6 percent in 2019 versus 2018. She expects that growth to continue through 2020, even after Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 this month. Her reasoning: businesses in emerging regions — China, Eurasia, the emerging Asia-Pacific — have not yet upgraded. That creates demand.
But here is the problem for Acer and Asustek. That upgrade wave may bypass them. When corporate buyers refresh fleets, they tend to buy from Lenovo, HP, or Dell. Those three have the enterprise sales teams, the service contracts, the supply chains that big orders demand. Acer and Asustek built their reputations on consumer notebooks and small-business boxes. That is a different game.
The numbers back this up. Global shipments rose, yet both Taiwanese firms lost share. That means their competitors grew faster. Lenovo, HP, and Dell absorbed the growth. Acer and Asustek treaded water.
For the Taiwanese economy, these two companies are not minor players. They are pillars of the island’s electronics sector. A sustained slide in PC share, even a slow one, means pressure on supply-chain partners in Taipei and across the Taiwan Strait. Component orders shrink. Assembly lines run slower. The effect ripples through an industry that employs thousands.
Kitagawa’s forecast offers a narrow window. She sees growth continuing this year. But the clock is ticking. Windows 7 support ended this month. The upgrade wave will crest and then recede. Once businesses in those emerging markets finish their transitions, the replacement cycle slows. After that, the market returns to its long-term decline. Tablets and smartphones have eaten the low end. Cloud computing has eaten the server room. The PC is not dead, but it is no longer growing.
Acer and Asustek know this. Both have tried to diversify. Acer pushed into gaming hardware and cloud services. Asustek built a strong line in motherboards and components, plus its Republic of Gamers brand. But PCs remain the core. When the core shrinks, the whole company feels it.
The 2019 rankings tell a simple story. Acer and Asustek survived. They held their ranks. But they lost ground in a market that grew. That is not a formula for the long haul. The question now is whether the Windows 7 upgrade wave gives them a chance to reverse the slide, or whether they will simply lose share again in 2020.
