Without a doubt, the PC executive that has been the most critical of Microsoft during the launch of Windows 8 has been Acer president JT Wong. In the past, Wong has slammed Microsoft"s decision to launch the Surface tablet. However, a few weeks ago Wong said that Acer still had a "wait and see" attitude for the success of Windows 8 itself.
Today, in a new interview, Wong appears to have abandoned the "wait and see" mode. Bloomberg reports that Acer had a 28 percent drop in its PC shipments for the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to a year ago. Wong added, "Windows 8 itself is still not successful ... The whole market didn’t come back to growth after the Windows 8 launch, that’s a simple way to judge if it is successful or not."
However, Wong also noted that shipments of its Chromebook notebooks in the US have been successful. Wong said that the notebooks, based on Google"s Chrome OS, have now taken up between five and 10 percent of all of Acer"s notebook shipments in the US. Acer launched a $199 Chromebook in November.
Wong called the response to the Chromebooks in the US "amazing". He added, "You saw that all the marketing and promotions were not as broad as Windows 8, so to reach this success is encouraging." Acer is still evaluating whether or not to launch a Windows RT-based tablet and won"t launch one before the back-to-school shopping season at the earliest, according to Wong.
Source: Bloomberg | Image via Acer