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Ben Furfie Sep 26 2008, 10:43am

Interview: PC Retail sits down with Acer's Bobby Watkins to talk all things PC

After striking success in the netbook arena with the Aspire One range and becoming the number one consumer desktop vendor in the UK, Acer is currently celebrating growth ahead of the market. Andrew Wooden talks to UK country manager Bobby Watkins…

Not so long ago, Acer was seeing great success with larger screen, higher-spec laptops. Have you noticed much more emphasis on smaller 'netbooks' over the past few months and what do you think this means for the industry?

We still have great success with larger screens. Our unique 16-inch and 18-inch Aspire notebooks are strong sellers, but we also understand the demand for smaller devices such as netbooks, whether they be as a secondary system to the main notebook/ desktop at home or a primary system for a light user.

Netbooks are an exciting opportunity for the industry, providing they are marketed in the correct way. Acer is investing heavily in terms of marketing the Aspire One, both on our own and with key partners, to ensure the message going to the end customer is clear – a netbook does not replace your PC.

We see netbooks as mobile internet devices that are great at providing mobile connectivity, but they will not handle all the things people want to do on their main PC as they were never designed for such tasks. I think the simplest way to position a netbook is that it is designed for content consumption not content creation.

To read the full interview, click here.