Acer expects its 2018 gaming PC revenues from the Asia Pacific market to double from 2017, bolstered by the firm's robust marketing efforts including hosting the APAC Predator League, an annual e-sports event named after the firm's gaming PC brand, in the region.

Andrew Hou, Acer's president for Pan Asia Pacific, said the region will become a major growth market for gaming PCs, as the just-concluded 18th Asian Games held in Jakarta included for the first time ever e-sports among demonstration events, fueling a new wave of growth momentum for gaming PCs in the regional market.

He continued that gaming devices will become the mainstream in the Asia Pacific PC market in 2022, when e-sports will become an official competition in the 19th Asian Games to be held in Hangzhou, China.

To better benefit from the huge growth potentials, Acer is moving to expand its second Predator League to be held in January 2019 in Thailand, seeking to attract over 5,000 gaming teams from 16 countries in the pan Asia-Pacific region, compared to 1,197 teams from eight countries when the first edition was held in Indonesia in January 2018.

Drastic revenue increases

Acer's gaming PC revenues from the Asia Pacific market shot up 288% on year in 2017, and posted an annual increase of 150% in the first-half 2018. Despite the high comparison basis, Hou indicated that Acer can accomplish the goal of having its 2018 APAC gaming PC revenues double from 2017.

In terms of individual markets, Hou continued, India and Thailand have contributed the highest gaming PC sales growth for Acer, followed by Malaysia and Indonesia.

Hou stressed notebooks will remain the mainstay of Acer's gaming PCs, and the company released a series of new gaming devices and peripherals at IFA 2018, including the motorized gaming cockpit and Predator Thronos gaming chair with a steel structure and motorized cockpit.

In the APAC enterprise market, Acer managed to post an annual revenue growth of 14% in the first half of 2018 for sales of supercomputers, servers and virtual desktop infrastructure systems. The combined revenue ratio for such products is expected to rise from 42% in the first half to 45% by the end of 2018 before reaching an ultimate goal of 50% of total revenues from APAC, according to Hou.