Comments on: Arab States To Boycott Acer?

By: Carbon Steel Turtle

Carbon Steel Turtle — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:43:16 +0000

I do hope they boycott Acer because Acer is one of the 3 or 4 PC spec builders in the world today. Most PCs are built by Acer and 2 or 3 other companies who all job their production lines to every PC brand on earth. Apple, HP, Dell and others are all ‘Acer’ PCs built according to those brands specs and requirements.

By: Carbon Steel Turtle

Carbon Steel Turtle — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:10:01 +0000

Typically, large companies call out ZA separately from the rest of Africa because economically it’s so different. Moreover, the strongest economic ties ZA has now are with the Mideast and West Asia, not Africa or Europe.

By: Jim from Iowa

Jim from Iowa — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 11:35:05 +0000

I think Shy Guy actually stumbled onto the truth. This has a lot more to do with Acer’s targeted marketing than any corporate antipathy towards Israel. Do you think there is any intention to equate Mexicans with Americans in this chart? And what kind of a business model is that to exhibit hostility toward potential customers? Who do you think Acer Computers is, Chick-fil-A?

By: tom

tom — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 08:36:37 +0000

Btw, it’s more likely a Turkish flag…also quite fitting

Flag of Turkey
Flag of Pakistan

By: tom

tom — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 08:34:13 +0000

This reminds me of an internal news post in our company:

“Management Change Middle East

…and will be responsible for overseeing [company name]‘s activities in all 20 countries within the Middle East region, namely: Bahrain, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Maldives, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.”

I wanted to complain, but apparently, Israel is included with Western Europe for this matter…so without going into the political discussion that there’s no place called “Balestine” (since there’s no “P”-sound in the Arab language), Israel is economically equal to Western Europe, which is kind of, how can I say, comforting

By: Shy Guy

Shy Guy — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 08:03:06 +0000

Is this Acer’s way of equating Israel with South Africa

What equate do you have in mind to the South Africa of 2012?

SA today is a very anti-Israeli country, just the same as the rest of the countries in the Middle East.

Anyway, they do not have enough potential in the Africa market to justify a seperate heading.

By: JMF

JMF — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 03:39:20 +0000

Further evidence that Norman’s theory of coincidence is reasonable: Look at the “Americas” column. Canada is split into two – Canada (EN) and Canada (FR). And neither Brazil nor Mexico is part of “Latin America”, even though, linguistically, they are both part of “Latin America”.

This is consistent with an argument that Acer adds sub-websites wherever the market is big enough to justify it and different enough (even a different currency can be enough) to make it worth the work it takes to maintain the extra website.

By: Norman B.

Norman B. — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:35:06 +0000

I would say it’s a coincidence, since the heading is “Middle East/Africa”. It does raise the question of whether the Acer people believe that there aren’t enough computer literate people in the rest of Africa to make marketing to them worthwhile. Likewise, separating Israel from the rest of the Middle East could very well indicate that the strength of the Israeli market equals the rest of the region combined.

By: Andrew Brehm

Andrew Brehm — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 21:28:06 +0000

Is this Acer’s way of equating Israel with South Africa, or a bad coincidence?

No, it’s a logical grouping.

The Acer Web site for Israel is probably planned to be in Hebrew one day, the one for the “Middle East” in Arabic, and the site for South Africa is already in English.

Note that the “Middle East” site is really a United Arab Emirates site which apparently serves the entire Arab League. (But I doubt that they would deliver to Algeria or Iraq.)