[news] Acer hopes to top 1 million AA1 sales in September

I e-mailed a news tip to the fellas here.

Saw this on Reuters:
Acer seeks record notebook PC sales
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersE ... 2020080904

On the second page of the article it adds this bit on its impact on the market in Japan:

Go, AA1, go! The little engine that could. :mrgreen:

 

Re: Acer hopes to top 1 million AA1 sales in September

the real trick to selling 1 million units is MAKING 1 million units. They don't seem to keen on the "production" side of things, they just like marketing a lot.

 

Expects to exceed 1 million in September.

So by the end of this month, fingers crossed and rose glasses on, they just might have sold 1,000,000.

....which means right about now they've probably sold <250k... otherwise they would have been more forthcoming with the info.

The data for Japanese sales is factually correct, but still a big fudge.

Its for the first week of A1 sales. There were no other competing products released near that period, while the A1 had been on preorder for a month. So what with the initial launch hype + all the preorders on an otherwise slow week (its not back to school here or anything) its hardly surprising.

Asus 901 is cheaper in Japan and is again outselling the A1 here this week after the price drop. In total sales its surely far ahead.

On the positive side, the A1 gets slightly better reviews and apparently they are still selling them as fast as they can deliver them here, after selling out the first lot on the first weekend they went on sale.

 

There's a little followup on this at a UK site, with some bits on the planned 3G version:

Acer predicts 2m netbook sales for Q3
http://www.thetelecom.co.uk/20080905/ac ... es-for-q3/

 

I think that the real trick to doing this, aside from having the actual product, would be to build a following/community like the eeePC has. There will be a lot of competition with similar specs and prices, and they can't sell this on price alone. That would mean being very responsive to problems like:

black screen of death on reboot
screen flicker
loud fan/poor fan control/fan always on
battery availability
RAM upgrade and warranty issues

So far, there is no indication that this will happen, and word of mouth is starting to go around that the machines have problems. This is what is going to limit their sales, and it would be so easy for them to do something to try to blunt some of these problems even if they can't be completely fixed. Acer, where are you?