Acer, the world's No 2 PC maker, aims to boost its revenue by more 70 percent over the next three years, while maintaining margins to avoid repeating a similar meteoric rise and fall less than a decade ago.

Much of that growth is set to come from low-cost netbook PCs, which Acer expects to rise over 50 percent in 2010, chairman J T Wang said, citing an improving global economy and migration to smaller, the more mobile PCs for the explosive growth.

"The idea is to reach $30 billion as soon as possible," Wang told Reuters in an interview, in his first public comments since overtaking Dell as the world's No 2 PC maker.

"When we look at the overall market, if the PC market starts to grow from next year and handhelds have the potential to become a $200 billion market, $30 billion is a humble target."    

The market expects revenue at Acer to reach T$573 billion ($17.6 billion) this year, according to 22 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The Taiwanese PC brand commanded about 14 percent of the global PC market in the third quarter, surpassing former No 2 Dell and coming second only to Hewlett-Packard at over 20 percent, according to research firm IDC.

Acer expects to ship about 12 million low-cost netbook PCs this year, and is currently the biggest player in the field that was pioneered by its crosstown rival Asustek in 2007.
 About 26 million netbook PCs are expected to be sold this year, IDC said in June.

Wang said Microsoft's launch of its Windows 7 operating system on Thursday is also expected to help sales, as consumers look to upgrade their computers running on the much-maligned Vista or the eight-year-old XP system.

"It's positive," Wang said. "Looking at Microsoft the past 10 years, they've made the operating system more complicated all the way. This time, they've made it simpler. It's a totally opposite direction of their design philosophy." - Reuters