Laptop Buying Guide

Acer catches up with Dell

February 18, Germany, Munich Airport. In the middle of a crowded aisle, there is an oval-shaped island of Acer products, the two passengers are tinkering with a computer terminal next to the airport duty free shops and a slip of the world famous shops. Closer observation, one can find not only the many brands of Acer's notebook computers, as well as placed in a glass case houses smartphone. The dark wood booths with eye-catching "acer" LOGO, everyone from here who can see through.

To see this so close to the consumer display design, reminiscent of long ago between the Dell and Acer, "the global PC market, second" battle with the "low profit" on the other.

Late last year, Dell, Acer on "the global PC market, second," raised concerns about the battle. In fact, far more than such a dispute, the two bickering throughout the whole of 2009.

March 26, 2009, Dell founder, chairman and CEO Michael Dell's visit to China, referring to Acer, the Acer said that the Internet more than the selling, but the overall profitability of the company far behind Dell, Acer The full annual revenues only with Dell, a division quite.

Half a month after the April 8, Acer Group chairman JT Wang has also arrived in Beijing on Mr. Dell dished out the "sell Acer little more money," remarks had responded, he admits that Acer is a low profit can not be a fact of life, Acer will try to change the bottom line.

Can see that Mr. Dell is very high profile when he thinks Dell's industry-oriented, large customers, profits high, while the Acer to consumers as the main user, the profit on the low side.

However, low profits in the six months after Acer proud of.

Last year, in October, 2009 in the third quarter analysis of global computer sales results in the global PC market, Acer beyond Dell, with 14% of the share rose to second place. The results, so that Acer chairman JT Wang said at once emboldened full, on several occasions said, "the next objective will be to go beyond HP."

But then, Dell Acer's "second" are striking back.

Last year in October, in the third quarter, Dell's Asia-Pacific conference call, when Die Zeit reporter asked, "how to look up the market, Acer's second", the Stephen Felice, president Dell's global small and medium enterprises will be Acer market share reasons for the increase is due to "IT recovery in demand mainly in the consumer area."

Stephen Felice said: "If the manufacturers of consumer-oriented business, then will bounce back faster. Only 20% of Dell's business in this area, so the current recovery to bring Dell's benefit is limited." In fact, Stephen The implication is clear, if the IT market will be fully warmed up, the corporate market will further grow, Dell's overall growth will be coming to that time, Acer's "second" may well be a flash in the pan come and gone.

The fact that in the end do? Different opinions. According to JP Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz said in a research report, Dell is catching up, "in large part because they are more closely associated with the enterprise market's sake," Dell has about 80% of its revenue from corporate customers, "2009 years, the trade surplus in IT procurement performance is expected to flexible consumers rather than businesses - though this flexibility is mainly reflected in the low-cost product areas."

On the other hand, the recovery of the IT industry as a whole, Michael Dell is still very optimistic, and he in the earnings release said: "The overall IT demand in the third quarter showed a significant increase, we expect this growth trend will continue in the fourth quarter, to maintain. Dell's business development have also shown the same trend, especially our large-scale enterprises and small and medium enterprise business. "

Tit for tat between the Dell and Acer's "war of words," lies behind the two different business ideas, two different development models disputes between them. Acer and the years of operating the Great Leap Forward in 2009, people can not help but think, Dell has always been proud of the direct sales model is come to an end.

Mozilla Ex-security chief joining Apple

Mozilla ex-security chief Wendell Schneider (Window Snyder) has joined Apple.

According to sources, Schneider is the beginning of this week, as the new work, her current position is Apple's senior security product manager.

Before joining Mozilla, Schneider has played for Microsoft, and serve as a safety strategy for the division responsible for managing the Microsoft and security consulting firm and is responsible for the relationship between Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 operating system security issues.

Schneider in 2006 and joined the Mozilla Firefox browser, is responsible for leading the security team, then Firefox is facing a growing number of hacker attacks. She left in 2008, over the past year has served as consultant.