Strategic Management_ Acer Computers company - Essay Example

d). Sony, Hewlet Packard, Dell etc are some of the competitors of Acer. Acer is not without its problems though, while market shares in Europe continue to go up, the market shares listed in North America have been slipping over the last few years (The History Of Acer, 2009). The current global financial crisis has affected the business of Acer in North America. Computer industry is one of the worst affected segments because of the recession. At the same time the business of Acer in the Asian region has increased a lot because of the comparatively less damage, the recession has done to the Asian countries like India and China.

Acer is utilizing the merger and acquisition strategies to strengthen their wings across the world. In 2007, Acer announced their plans to acquire their US rivals Gateway Inc. In 2008 they have acquired more than 75% shares of Packard Bell. Acer has started to use Linux as the operating system in their notebooks and laptops from 2008 onwards in order to promote the free software Linux and also to minimize the cost of laptops. Acer and HP have recently engaged in severe law suit of patent violation which they settled amicably outside the court later.

A global firm is an organization which is having multinational branches across the world. It should be remembered that a firm which produce the products domestically and market them internationally need not be a global firm. Operating in more than 100 countries and employing around 40000 people worldwide, Acer is definitely a global firm. It operates in Asia, Africa, North America, Australia, Europe, Middle East, etc. Acer, at present has 12 factories and 39 assembly centers operating in different countries.

It was able to sell around 7.5 million personal computers in 1998. Moreover, Acer has an excellent global sales network with over 200agents and