Will Acer be the post-PC era's first casualty?

UPDATE: - Acer have refuted the claim below in this official response.  ARN also dismisses the original article, and we've been contacted directly by an Acer BDM with a similar objection  We've received some assurance that Acer will still support education customers (see comments section, below), although to what level and whether it includes all customers in all regions remains unclear (if unsure, you should contact your local Acer person).

According to Channel News, Acer Australia has taken a serious hit from the recent decline in PC sales, and are reacting by scaling back their Australian operations, sacking staff, stopping manufacturing and ending field-service operations after seeing an almost 40% loss in sales.

This puts things in an interesting context for us as a school.  Have we just dodged a bullet?  The Acer w510 was one of a shortlist of devices in contention for our 1:1 computing program.  It only missed out by a narrow margin, but now that I hear quotes like these, some of which were sourced from Acer employees, I think I should be happy the Acer just missed out:

"Acer Australia will cease production of PC's for schools"

"The intent is to wind down all field service operations and move to a return to base warranty model across the board"

This reminds me of another recent disaster that befell a number of Australian schools when Optima went out of business.  While not that same level of disaster, this still doesn't look good for those relying on onsite service contracts.

Of course, Acer will still be able to service their equipment, albeit in a return-to-base manner, but it would seem they now intend to operate more like a Samsung, ASUS or Apple in future.  Leaving the Enterprise hardware supply to the big boys (Lenovo, Dell and HP).  Enterprise wont miss them, but I'm sure some schools and small businesses will.