Acer passes Dell

Acer has finally passed Dell in terms of global computer sales (link here). The rise of Acer and other Taiwanese brands, such as HTC, proves the wisdom of Acer's decision to focus on brand while hiving off its manufacturing operations, including manufacturing services. The Taiwanese fretted for years about their inability to create brands in sad contrast to big Korean brands like Samsung, but since adopting the same strategy for brand that they did for other parts of the value chain (i.e. segmentation of the value chain and then narrow focus on one small slice of the value chain), they have achieved great success without needing the scale and scope of Korean chaebol.