Posted by Migo on Aug 28th, 2007
Taiwanese PC company, Acer, is snapping up what was one of the biggest names in home-computing, Gateway, for a reported $710 million. Acer plans on keeping not only the Gateway brand and cow-print logo, but the eMachines brand as well, which Gateway gained through a merger in 2004. Gateway is still one of the top selling PC manufacturers in the U.S., but its sales have slumped dramatically in comparison to its competitors.
All three brands are targeting the same audience, so this could potentially turn Acer into a home-computing juggernaut. The problem with that, however, all three could be in competition with each other over the same consumers.
Gateway was ahead of its time, opening the first Gateway Country retails store in 1996. This is something Apple would pick up on and used with great success in its own Apple Store.
From one-man startup to industry superstar, worth an estimated $27 billion in its heyday, and now being bought by Acer. Although the company is still doing fairly well, it’s been a bumpy road for Gateway, and hopefully this new deal will breathe some new life back into the cow-print computer we’ve all come to know.
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I’m more surprised they’re keeping the eMachines brand; it has such a stigma on it for being a cheap computer with poor reliability. When I worked at a Major Unnamed Computer Store Chain, we had more eMachine returns in a week than we had HP or Compaq returns in two months. Granted, that was several years ago now, but from my feelers still in the industry I gather not a whole lot has changed.
My favorite Gateway product remains the old Anykey Keyboard, with its hardware-based programmability, second set of F-keys in the “old IBM” position (to the left of the QWERTY keys), and eight-position cursor pad. It’s probably my favorite non-Model M keyboard, all things being equal.