Day 1 Edition - 2018 Edition

NOMADIC LIFESTYLE /

NOMADIC LIFESTYLE / GAMING BROUGHT TO YOU BY WE HAVE ONE OF THE STRONGEST GAMING, ULTRA-SLIM AND CHROMEBOOK PORTFOLIOS IN THE INDUSTRY Emmanuel Fromont President EMEA, Acer Acer focused on gaming Emmanuel Fromont, Acer’s President, EMEA, talks about the company’s recent successes in the gaming arena Acer has been performing exceptionally well over the past year, with the company recently announcing its highest second quarter earnings in eight years. We started by asking Emmanuel Fromont what are the reasons behind Acer’s success. We are focusing on the right market trends, by bringing technologies to market first and make them available to many, while we are continuously improving our operational efficiency. Today, we have one of the strongest gaming, ultra-slim and Chromebook portfolios in the industry. At the same time, we are exploring new markets such as VR and digital signage. With StarVR, we have recently launched the first company purely focused on VR. Those are very attractive segments to focus on. There are still a few growth areas due to new technologies made available now to consumers or because of changing consumer habits. Therefore, we decided to focus our R&D on the ultraslim and gaming segments, 56 as well as the education sector, which shows positive trends. How important is gaming for Acer in general? Our growth in the gaming market is hard to ignore: 61% year-on-year in 2017 with no signs of slowing down neither this year. Since January 2018, we have grown again by more than 90%. Gaming is a key focus for us, and it’s always exciting to see the progress in design and technology innovations made available to gamers today meeting the latest trends in game development for more powerful systems and graphic requirements. We are fully connected to the gaming scene and our products are purely based on customer insights. Our Predator brand is already one of the top gaming brands in a number of EMEA countries, including Germany, Russia and the Nordics. We are continuously pushing the limits by bringing new technologies and designs to market first, like the first curved gaming notebook, or the thinnest desktop grade performance notebook. A lot of our R&D investment goes into thermal and cooling technology, making sure all this power needed always stays cool with our IceTunnel or 3D Aeroblade technology. How is Acer creating a more immersive gaming experience? First of all we have a full gaming portfolio for casual gamers and hardcore gamers, including a full array of accessories. Secondly, we are deeply integrated and connected to the gaming scene, and for the third year we are the proud partner and official monitor provider of the biggest gaming franchise in the world, League of Legends, as well as official partner of the oldest pro tour series, the Intel Extreme Masters. All of these partnership not only let us connect to eSports athletes and fans, but also give us valuable insights into our product designs. What’s new at IFA from Predator? We continue to push the boundaries of gaming by already upgrading the newest line with the latest available technology. We have also just launched the next generation tournament-grade monitor, the Predator XB3, which will be used at all major eSports events. At our global press conference, we also showed everyone what’s soon available from Acer with the Predator X and the Triton 900. A server-grade ultra-high performance desktop beast and the first convertible gaming notebook with powerful processor and graphics capabilities. What are your key goals at IFA and how effective is this show in reaching your target markets? Our main goal is to meet SINCE JANUARY 2018, WE HAVE GROWN OUR GAMING BUSINESS BY MORE THAN 90% with customers and media from all over Europe just before the most important season of the year. Most of our markets are attending it, and we hope there will be much more in the next years Hall 12 Stand 108

BUYERS' GUIDE NOMADIC LIFESTYLE GAMING HARDWARE MARKET The game is still on and the PC gaming business continues its success story. Mobile gaming PCs grew strongly by 32% in value for the first six months of the year, reaching a turnover of more than 1.4 billion euro. Desktop gaming computers profited from this trend as well with a robust growth of 26% and generated 340 million euro for the same period. The main regions for gaming laptops remain Western Europe and Asia Pacific (incl. China) with shares of 37% and 34% respectively. Regarding gaming desktops Western Europe dominates the market with a share of over 60%, followed by Asia Pacific with 24%. All the other regions support the gaming trend with double-digit growth. With the gaming reaching the mass market, casual gaming and gaming-capable PCs can contribute to the gaming expansion as well. STATE OF PLAY The writing is on the scoreboard: you know gaming is hot when an eSports company (Skillz) ranked Number One in America’s fastest growing businesses—first out of 6 million companies. Or when Nielsen, a leading provider of television viewer statistics and consumer data, jumps in with Nielsen eSports— attracted by tournaments with million in payouts. And it’s not all about the thousands of pro gamers… Skillz, with its 3-year growth rate at 50,059%, has its eye on 191 million eSports players worldwide. What’s great for the CE industry is that all these gaming players love their kit. INNOVATIONS TO LOOK FOR AT IFA DESIGN While CE is all about fashion and style today, gaming is even more so. It’s not just that the players want to show their kit is more powerful, more expensive than the average consumer. It’s also an affinity statement: you are now officially part of a tribe. More than that, having stylish equipment instills confidence, bolsters the game-face and makes you feel like a Master of the Universe. DURABILITY Kick-ass design is critical, but make no mistake. This kit gets intensive use, a literal pounding regardless of whether it’s a pro or amateur gamer in action. Your regular computer keyboard would be bludgeoned to death in a single season. Inside and out the gaming machines must be at least prosumer if not industrial quality. That also goes for anything attached to the gaming hardware, like the mouse, mousepad and monitor. LIGHTING You probably thought we would mention POWER. While power is a very important differentiator, it is also an easy selling point to benchmark. A glance at spec sheets can clearly show the step-ups in pricing as power goes up. Far subtler is the factor of lighting. Gaming hardware today is distinguished by its LED trimmings… and those flashes of light make a difference in a sale. Even keyboards for gamers need backlighting. For example, Acer’s PredatorSense software can adjust the multi-coloured lighting on the customisable “growl lights” along the PC’s front chassis. CONTACT Pavlin Lazarov Global Strategic Insights Consumer Electronics Pavlin.Lazarov@GfK.com THE FUTURE eSports drives all gaming forward, motorboating industry sales along in its slipstream. Yet, it remains a secret from the average citizen who doesn’t even know the Olympics is considering adding eSports. Research company Newzoo says, in 2018, the global eSports economy will grow to 5.6 million, up 38% Y/Y. The global eSports audience will reach 380 million this year. More CE brands, more retail organizations are playing the game by jumping into gaming hardware, peripherals and accessories—and you can thank eSports for this bright star on the retail horizon. INNOVATING @ IFA ACER’S PREDATOR STALKS ITS PREY The Predator Orion 5000 (PO5-100) is a powerful new gaming PC from Acer that features second Gen AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processors with 8 cores and 16 threads paired with the latest AMD B450 chipset 1 , and up to NVIDIA ® GeForce ® GTX 1080 GPUs - all designed to give gamers the ability to enjoy their favourite games in high screen resolutions, as well as premium VR experiences. The Predator Orion 5000’s chassis has a transparent side panel to show off its powerful internals. » HALL 12 / STAND 108 DELL’S COMMITMENT TO GAMERS: ALIENWARE AURORA The designated training PC for Team Liquid, the Alienware Aurora is available with the just announced NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070, 2080 and 2080 Ti GPUs. As a mid-tower desktop, Aurora is a proven powerhouse for gaming professionals who need significant performance and upgradability. The new Aurora is ideal for VR, 4K gaming and even up to 12K gaming with its highest-end graphics options. » HALL 16 / STAND 101 BROUGHT TO YOU BY www.ifa-international.org IFA International • Friday 31 st August 2018 57