Acer targets Botswana education market in regional push

GAZETTE REPORTER

Global technology company Acer is stepping outside its South African continental base for a regional push with Botswana featuring in its second wave of a regional push, the company’s Africa Country Manager, Paul Collins said last week. Collins said that the Company’s bold new value proposition, the Reliability Promise as well as its targeting of the education market will give the company the edge over some of its prolific competitors. Acer, is one of the world’s top 5 PC companies, with a presence in over 160 countries, Acer views Africa – particularly southern Africa – as a key region for its continued emerging markets growth and expansion.
“With the Reliability Promise we say that we will not only repair your device within two days, cutting down the massive 22 day down time that we currently see, we will also give a customer a full refund of their purchase price if the device has faults within the first year of the purchase,” said Collins.
Quizzed on the business sense of such a proposition, Collins said “We have looked at our books and we have looked at the reliability of our products and we are confident that we can offer such a promise,” he said.
Acer aims to bring its market share from 6 percent to 20 percent within six months. “We did that  in Mauritius and so we are confident that we can do it here,” Collins told Gazette Business. The Company landed in Mauritius as the first point of call in its re-entrance of the region. “We have always been there but maybe we didn’t do things properly but this time we come with this strategy,” he said.
Collins said that with buy-in from the Botswana Government coupled with Acer’s Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiative which combines collaboration capabilities, well as other advantages of technology based education, Acer can turn the country into an education hub and even eliminate the need for students to physically carry books.
Acer’s Classroom Managers help to teachers to monitor better, students’ activities and aid interaction and connectivity.“We have set up a country office with a manager and technical expert to conduct training, and soon we will announce more specific developments,” said Collins.
Acer is currently evaluating the region to identify a local partner to establish an Acer Education Solution Centre in Botswana. Available to a limited number of partners that demonstrate high levels of expertise and competence in this sector, an Acer Education Solution Centre is an environment where institutions can view, test and research the available products and solutions to support their technology strategies.
Acer is currently evaluating the region to identify a local partner to establish an Acer Education Solution Centre in Botswana, an environment where institutions can view, test and research the available products and solutions to support their technology strategies.