Acer CEO Confirms Laptop Price Hikes Are Coming And Blames Tariffs
At least one major laptop maker is getting ready to raise prices in response to US President Donald Trump's 10% tariffs on Chinese imports. According to Acer's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Jason Chen, the upcoming price hikes will be "very straightforward," with plans to raise the cost 10% next month to offset the tariffs.
"We will have to adjust the end user price to reflect the tariff. We think 10% probably be the default price increase because of the import tax. It's very straightforward," Chen said in a statement to The Telegraph.
According to Statista, Acer accounts for 12% of laptop ownership in the US (as of December 2024). That puts it in a tie with Lenovo and ahead of Microsoft (10%), Samsung (10%), ASUS (7%), Toshiba (4%), Alienware (3% and owned by Dell)), and several other brands with a 1% share or less.
HP, which holds the top spot at 33%, along with Apple (27%) and Dell (23%) are much bigger players in the US market. However, it remains to be seen if Acer is the first domino to fall. It really depends on where the laptops are made and shipped from. Dell, for example, manufacturers some of its laptops in China, though according to Slashgear, it also has final assembly facilities in many parts of the world, including the US, Brazil, India, Ireland, Poland, and several other territories.
According to The Telegraph, around 80% of all laptops imported into the US are assembled in China. If that figure is accurate, it means we could potentially see price hikes almost across the board on notebooks and 2-in-1 devices (among other electronics).
Chen indicated that Acer's decision to raise prices in line with tariffs came about a week ago. However, since the tariffs do not apply to any products that left China before February, it could be a few weeks before we see higher pricing in the retail segment.
That could vary by manufacturer and the type of product, though. For example, in a post on X/Twitter, Newegg initially placed the blame on tariffs for big spikes in pricing NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce 5080 graphics cards. Newegg later deleted all posts on the subject.
There's more at play in the GPU segment, with grossly higher price tags largely the result of not enough supply. But it underscores how manufacturers and retailers might play the 'tariffs' card when raising prices. To that end, a user on Reddit (as spotted by The Register) claims that when they were getting a quote on a Dell workstation, their CDW rep indicated that prices on new shipments will go up by around 20% in response to tariffs. It's not clear if that was only in relation to the workstation.
