Acer is looking to grow its share of the enterprise notebook market in the Middle East and Africa to 15% in 2018 from only 2% in 2017, according to country manager Paul Collins.

Acer is set to partner with cloud computing service providers such as Microsoft and Cisco to expand in the region's enterprise sector and will bundle their services with its PCs.

Acer used to focus primarily on the consumer sector, but has been gradually devoting more resources to the enterprise area as demand from the consumer sector remains weak. For Asia Pacific, Acer is planning to have its enterprise PC business contribute half of the region's overall revenues and has also set a high growth target for the Middle East and Africa region.

Collins pointed out that Acer has a share of 82% in the UAE's education sector, primarily contributed by Acer's Chromebooks. Compared to competitors, Acer has a complete Chromebook product lineup that can satisfy clients' different demand such as water-proof, dust-proof or anti-collision designs.

For the small- to medium-size enterprises, Acer only made limited efforts in the past, but has already prepared to partner with Microsoft and Cisco to offer cloud computing services in their enterprise PCs.

Currently, most of the Middle East and Africa small- to medium-size enterprises have adopted traditional servers instead of cloud computing systems and Acer's cloud computing full solution is able to save 50% of the costs compared to the hosting servers in house.

Acer's solution has already attracted orders from many small- to medium-size enterprises especially startups, Collins noted.

Since Acer is the only vendor offering such a sales model in the region, Collins is confident about achieving its goal of improving its share in the enterprise sector. Acer has also been pushing its projectors and monitors, looking to expand its shares of these market segments in the region, Collins added.