Why is Acer's presence in China declining? Three major flaws have caused it to fall behind

In recent years, there has been a "strange phenomenon" in the consumer electronics market: some brands are "going crazy" in the international market, but their performance in the domestic market is mediocre.

A typical example is Samsung. In the global market, Samsung's mobile phone shipments often rank among the top three. But in China, it can't even catch up with Xiaomi, Huami, OV, etc.

Samsung is not an isolated case. In the PC market, Acer is also such a "unique" existence.

According to data from market research firm Canalys, Acer shipped 5.094 million PCs in 2022, with a global market share of 7.3%, ranking fourth in the world after Lenovo, HP, and Dell. In China, Acer's presence has become increasingly low in recent years. In 2022, it was even squeezed out of the top five PC shipments by Huawei, and became the Others in the market.

Acer's presence in the domestic market has weakened, not only in terms of sales, but also in terms of brand awareness. For example, on Douyin, there are more than 20 Lenovo-related accounts, and Lenovo's official Douyin has 3.31 million followers, while Acer has less than 10 related accounts, and even its official flagship store has only 33,000 followers.

As a quasi-first-tier PC manufacturer, why does Acer perform well in the global market, but its presence in China is getting lower and lower? In addition to the focus of brand layout, the more critical reason is that Acer has three obvious flaws, which have caused it to gradually fall behind in the domestic market.

Good value for money but lacks product highlights

Acer, founded in 1976, is undoubtedly the "big brother" in the PC market. Even Asus, which is now on par with it in the market, has to call it "big brother" when they meet, because Acer has been nurturing Asus in its early development.

But despite being in the PC market for nearly 50 years, Acer is gradually becoming "old". One important reason is that Acer missed the dividend outlet in its development.

As we all know, in recent years, the demand for working from home and on the go has exploded, giving rise to a large number of demands for PC functions. For example, in office scenarios, people increasingly need the collaboration of terminal devices such as mobile phones and PCs, and increasingly need cloud services to achieve fast storage and transmission of office files, thereby improving office efficiency.

However, under this trend, Acer did not combine market demand to create products suitable for office workers, resulting in its products being obviously lacking in highlights compared to its peers.

Comparing Acer Swift S3, Lenovo Xiaoxin 14 and Huawei MateBook D14, in terms of product configuration and cost performance, Acer Swift S3 is very powerful, even more powerful than Lenovo Xiaoxin 14 and Huawei MateBook D14, but its features are far from the latter.

In terms of product configuration, the CPU of Acer Acer Spectra S3 is the 12th generation Core i5-1240P, the same as Huawei MateBook D14, and behind Lenovo Xiaoxin 14's i5-1340P. In terms of display, the Spectra S3 is equipped with a 2.5K IPS screen with a resolution of 2560*1440, which is significantly better than Lenovo Xiaoxin 14 and Huawei MateBook D14. In terms of power endurance, the Spectra S3 can theoretically last for more than 12 hours, which is only slightly weaker than Lenovo Xiaoxin 14. In terms of price, the Spectra S3 only costs 4038 yuan, which is 361 yuan cheaper than Lenovo Xiaoxin 14 and 761 yuan less than Huawei MateBook D14.

In terms of highlights, Lenovo Xiaoxin 14 is equipped with many highlight features such as super file transfer and phone switching assistant. Huawei MateBook D14 is equipped with Huawei's exclusive super terminal pull-and-close function, smart voice, Huawei cloud space and other special features, while Acer Swift S3 has almost no functional configuration to improve office efficiency.

Because of this, Acer's Swift S3, its best-selling thin and light notebook, is still far behind Lenovo's Xiaoxin 14 and Huawei's MateBook D14 in terms of sales. Currently, on JD.com, Acer's Swift S3 has over 50,000 reviews, while Lenovo's Xiaoxin 14 has over 200,000 reviews, and Huawei's MateBook D14 has as high as over 500,000 reviews.

The product's reputation is worrying and the inherent label is difficult to tear off  

In recent years, with the continuous development of the domestic economy and the continuous improvement of mass consumption levels, the trend of the PC consumer market has also been changing. In the past, people paid great attention to the price and cost-effectiveness of PC products, but now, in addition to price and cost-effectiveness, people are also paying more and more attention to the quality and quality of PC products.

But for Acer, this change in consumption trends has added resistance to its development in the domestic market.

In the PC consumer market, people have created a famous saying based on the characteristics of PC manufacturers: "Americans have a conscience", "evil as a rock", "cutting corners", "fools with a lot of money", among which "cutting corners" is exactly what describes Acer. From this inherent label, it is not difficult to see that the public despises Acer's consistent style.

In fact, as a veteran PC manufacturer, Acer's product creation capabilities are not weak. Take Acer's Shadow Knight as an example. This product is equipped with an i5-12500H CPU, 16GB memory, RTX3050 graphics card + 165Hz full-blood high color gamut. The configuration and performance are excellent enough, which is enough to show Acer's product strength.

But perhaps in order to save costs, Acer will "cut back" on certain aspects of its products from time to time. Take the Shadow Knight as an example, the body material it uses is a relatively ordinary composite material, which not only reduces its performance but also reduces the user experience.

Due to frequent "cutting corners", Acer is often criticized by users. On Heimao Complaint, many netizens complained about the black screen problem when the product was turned off. On Zhihu, some netizens complained that the Acer keyboard had paint peeling after only half a year of use. On Xiaohongshu, a large number of netizens complained about Acer's quality problems. Some netizens complained that the touch keys of the newly arrived Extraordinary S3 had warped corners, some complained that audio problems began to occur after only 5 days of use, and some complained that the Acer Extraordinary S3 was so noisy that it was "socially dead."

Although the total number of complaints about Acer's quality problems is not large, compared with Lenovo, Dell, HP and other first-tier PC manufacturers, it is nothing. However, Acer has long left consumers with the impression of "cutting corners" and has not "fighted back" against such negative labels in its development, which has invisibly increased users' doubts when purchasing.

Poor after-sales service of products has become a major area of ​​complaints for users  

Compared with product quality issues, Acer's after-sales service issues are even worse. On Heimao Complaints, searching for the keyword "Acer after-sales service" will reveal that there are only more than 500 related complaints, and 144 of them are related to after-sales service.

In addition to the flood of complaints on Heimao Complaints, there are a large number of feedbacks on its after-sales issues on major Internet platforms such as Tieba, Xiaohongshu, and Zhihu. Many after-sales feedbacks are integrated into the long after-sales repair time, unprofessional service, after-sales shirking and charging.

A closer look at Acer's after-sales layout in China reveals that, in fact, Acer has quite a few service outlets, with more than 500 service stations in more than 300 cities across the country. However, the distribution is uneven, with some cities having several service stations, while some second-, third-, and fourth-tier cities have difficulty finding service stations, causing many users to encounter "difficult" after-sales problems.

In comparison, mainland PC manufacturers have a more complete after-sales service layout than Acer. For example, Lenovo has more than 1,300 service stations across the country, and Huawei has more than 200 customer service centers in major cities across the country, covering nearly 1,000 counties and towns across the country.

For PC manufacturers, no one can guarantee that their products will not have any problems, but if problems occur, only by helping users solve them in a timely manner can they continue to gain the favor of users. Perfect after-sales service is the expectation of all users and should be the basic skill of PC manufacturers. However, in the case of Acer, this basic skill is somewhat "lagging behind".

Looking back at Acer's development history, it has experienced several twists and turns in the past 47 years.

In 1991, Acer experienced its first difficulty and suffered the biggest loss in its history. However, from 1993 to 1995, Acer quickly turned the situation around.

In 2000, Acer's performance dropped sharply again due to the continuous loss of OEM business. However, under the leadership of founder Stan Shih, the company quickly reversed the decline in 2004.

After 2011, Acer encountered another crisis, with a peak loss of more than NT$20 billion. At that time, in order to save the situation, Shi Zhenrong, who was 69 years old at the time, returned to Acer after 9 years of retirement.

In the past, Acer faced an ever-increasing market environment, but now the market situation has undergone profound changes.

On the one hand, PC demand has suffered a serious decline. According to Canalys data, global PC shipments fell 13% year-on-year in 2022, and major manufacturers are facing pressure to increase performance;

On the other hand, in today's market, Acer is facing obstruction from giants such as Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Apple in front, and "sniping" from emerging players such as Huawei and Xiaomi in the back.

As the situation changes, if Acer fails to launch products with distinctive highlights and fails to solve the problems of product reputation and after-sales service, it may be a big question whether it can return to the top in the domestic market.

The pictures in this article are all from the Internet

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.