Gateway 2000 history

In 1987 the company had revenues of $1.5 million.

In 1988 the company began to supplement these wages with monthly cash bonuses based on profits.

Spurred by these promotional efforts, which consumed only 2.5 percent of company revenues, Gateway sales continued their meteoric rise, reaching $70.6 million in 1989.

In 1990 Waitt also hired an advertising manager, a local photographer, and a designer, and produced a series of eye-catching and humorous new Gateway ads that began appearing in computer magazines every few months to keep up momentum in the fast-changing industry.

To increase productivity in its manufacturing operations, Gateway built a new 44,000-square-foot building down the road from its headquarters in the summer of 1991.

By the end of 1992, Gateway's sales had reached $1.1 billion, an increase of 76 percent over the previous year.

In an effort to offset the impact of those expenses, Gateway surprised Wall Street by unexpectedly announcing its intention to sell stock to the public in October 1993.

In May 1994, the company announced that it would continue to provide technical support free of charge, despite the fact that several of its competitors had begun to charge for this service.

In 1995 Gateway continued to grow, announcing plans to build an $18 million manufacturing plant in Hampton, Virginia, and acquiring 80 percent of an Australian computer maker, Osborne Computer Corporation.

The company concluded 1997 with record revenues of $6.29 billion and profits of over $1 billion.

Gateway's young founder, Ted Waitt, brought in an AT&T veteran, Jeffrey Weitzen, to run the company in January 1998, and one of Weitzen's first moves was to change ad agencies.

AOL acquired Gateway.net, the online component of Gateway, Inc. in October 1999 for US$800 million.

Innovation has been the key to successful market penetration for Acer. (Honi, Tarng, & Chu, 2000)

2001: Massive restructuring is launched involving significant consolidation and closures of facilities and the elimination of 9,400 jobs; net loss of $1.03 billion is recorded.

As the price war and decline in home-PC shipments continued, sales plummeted further in 2002, dropping to $4.17 billion.

The will to innovate comes from two reasons, innovation that arises as a reaction of a crises and needs. (Glor, 2003) Innovation can be also created as a response to create a market for new items to sale, (proactively). (Glor, 2003)

When completed in March 2004 the deal was valued at nearly $300 million.

Gateway moved build-to-order desktop, laptop, and server manufacturing back to the United States with the opening of its Gateway Configuration Center in Nashville, in September 2006.

On October 16, 2007, Acer completed its acquisition of Gateway.

5% growth, principal competitors are Dell Inc.; Fujitsu Siemens Computers; Hewlett-Packard; NEC Corporation; net income in 2008 11, 742, 135.

In the year 2009 Acer ranked second in the industry with a 13.

In Systems Theory the relationships in a system can trigger a butterfly effect on other parts of the system, or even throughout the entire system. (Kemp, 2010) In capitalism the systems theory would seek to create relationships in the system that provide larger profits.