Taiwan PC maker Acer Inc has set a revenue target of NT$330bn (approx $10bn) for the next financial year, with sales of information appliances accounting for nearly 50% of the total. Announcing the target, company founder and chairman Stan Shih said he envisions an Acer Inside service which brings together internet services, software, networks and appliances to cultivate business opportunities in the post-PC era. And to gain a firm foothold in the post-PC era, Acer also plans to set up a new company to make application-specific integrated circuits, he said.
Shih sees production veering away from PCs to what the company has dubbed XCs – computers designed for exclusive functions – and believes his 1997 prediction that by 2010, XC shipments would exceed those of PCs tenfold is likely to come true.
He said that the company’s strategy of combining hardware and service operations has enabled it to seize the market, and its next step is to produce ASICs for the XCs. Acer has invested in several Silicon Valley IC design houses in the past few years, and has established strong R&D abilities in chipset production at Acer Laboratories Inc.
Shih said the company may also start producing its own CPUs. Acer currently purchases CPUs for its XCs from Intel Corp, National Semiconductor Corp, Motorola Inc, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Integrated Device Technology Corp, Trident Systems Group Inc and IGS Technologies Inc.
