Blame Greece
According to Digitimes, Acer's and Asustek's Q1 profits could take a dive due to the weakness of the euro.
Between 50 and 60 percent of Acer's revenue stems from Eurozone
markets, while the same region accounts for more than 50 percent of
Asustek's revenue. The euro has nosedived over the past couple of
months and the current exchange rate is one euro per US $1.32, whereas
in late Q4 the rate was €1 to $1.5.
The declining euro is not only hurting US and Taiwan based companies,
it is playing havoc on European retail prices. Although European
consumer are used to paying more than their US counterparts, the
situation has grown even worse over the past few weeks. Distributors
and vendors seem to be freezing prices and it some cases even inflating
them to compensate for the drop.
Moreover, the Greek economic meltdown is also pushing the euro down, as
the country is close to defaulting due to immense debt. Each Greek man,
woman and child is blessed with more than €27,000 of foreign debt. The
nation that invented democracy could have and should have done a better
job governing itself.