Acer: Windows 8 has been a big dud, but Chromebooks rock

How has Windows 8 treated Acer? Not particularly well.

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Acer president Jim Wong says that the Windows 8 launch did essentially nothing for Acer’s PC sales. “The whole market didn’t come back to growth after the Windows 8 launch. That’s a simple way to judge if it is successful or not,” Wong told Bloomberg.

Wong’s comments come as the entire PC market is getting stomped by the menace that is tablet computing. The so-called post-PC era is ruining companies like Acer, which is on the verge of reporting its second annual loss.

But it’s not all doom-‘n’-gloom. For Acer, a big boost came from its Chromebooks, which accounted for roughly 10 percent of Acer’s PC shipments in the U.S. That turnout has been encouraging enough that Acer plans to offer the devices in other markets as well.

But that doesn’t exactly solve Acer’s Windows 8 problem, which is so significant that Acer doesn’t plan to release any Windows RT devices until this summer’s back-to-school season.

The development is a bit of a vindication for Acer, which seems to be institutionally opposed to anything Microsoft attempts. Acer CEO JT Wang said last August that consumers just weren’t interested in the operating system, and, more notoriously, told Microsoft to “think twice” about creating the Surface.

Perhaps it’s Acer that should think twice — in this case about working with Microsoft.