BEIJING - Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corp's spin-off of its PC business will benefit Acer Inc's business in China, said Oliver Ahrens, vice-president of Acer and president of Acer China.

The company has surpassed HP to become the second-largest player in China since last quarter, and the recent decision by HP, the world's largest PC maker, presents other players in the country an opportunity to increase market share and distribution channels, according to Acer.

Acer recently launched a new strategy and series of products to improve mobility, which was also HP's strategy at the beginning of this year.

On Aug 18, HP announced it would spin off its PC unit and halt production of Internet mobile devices, which includes smartphones and tablet PCs.

Acer's PC shipments increased to more than 1.2 million units in the first week of September, almost equal to its whole July shipment. The gain came despite a 1.1 percent drop in global PC shipments, to 84.3 million units, in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, according to a report by market research company Gartner Inc.

Acer attributes the strong performance to channel distributors losing confidence in HP because of the spin-off and starting to switch to other PC vendors.

Regarding the spin-off, Cliff Ho, head of product business and vice-president of Acer China, said: "I don't think the industry has reached a post-PC era. Acer will continue to follow market trends, as witnessed by our entry into tablet PCs and new notebooks".

"On a scale of 100, I give Acer only a 49 ... because we've tapped only half the potential of the Chinese market," Ahrens said.

Ahrens made the remarks recently when launching the new Aspire S3 notebook in Beijing.

To cater to Chinese customers, Acer will place greater emphasis on laptops, which accounted for about 50 percent of the company's sales revenue last year. "Acer has learned from its experience in tablet PCs that customers want more mobility and functions in a product, so we will focus on ultra-thin notebooks in the near future," he said.

For the PC industry, China is the fastest-growing market and has overtaken the United States in market size last quarter, according to US-based IT research company IDC. PC shipments to China hit 18.5 million units in the second quarter, exceeding the 17.7 million shipped to the US, IDC analyst Avinash K. Sundaram said.

The research company reported that Lenovo Group led the domestic market with a 31.7 percent market share in the quarter ended June, with Acer at No 2 holding 10.9 percent. HP occupied 8.5 percent as the fourth-biggest player at the time.