IBM, Acer May Announce $8-Billion Deal

International Business Machines Corp. and Acer Group Inc., Taiwan’s largest personal computer maker, are expected to announce a pact to sell products to each other worth about $8 billion over seven years, industry sources said. In the product-sharing deal, which continues their ongoing relationship, IBM will sell its floppy and hard-disk drives and some intellectual property to Acer, while Acer will sell monitors and other peripheral products it makes to IBM. A spokesman for Acer America Inc., the U.S. arm based in San Jose, said the two companies would make a joint announcement but declined to provide further details. A spokeswoman for IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y., declined to comment. Acer already manufactures a significant percentage of PCs that IBM ships under its Aptiva PC brand, targeted to home users, analysts said. For IBM, the deal represents another in a string of multibillion-dollar product-supply deals. IBM shares rose $3.63 to close at $116 on the NYSE.