In answer to our question (CI No 3,438), Acer Group Inc says the reason why it doesn’t make IDC’s list of top five worldwide PC vendors is because IDC’s unit share rankings do not account for OEM business, only brand name ships. So Acer paid IDC to research another report studying original manufacturing of PCs. It added together all PC’s Acer manufactured, on either a brand name or OEM basis, and concluded Acer built nearly six million PCs in 1997. IDC also subtracted from that number their best estimates of the volumes that major PC companies outsourced to OEM manufacturers (such as Acer), rather than built for themselves. Acer claims the study shows it is the second largest original manufacturer of PCs in the world behind Compaq and ahead of IBM. Although we are claming third largest to be conservative in our posture.
