Well this is a fine kettle of fish. Gateway, one of last independent PC brands standing, is merging with Asia’s darling, Acer, to form a Voltron-esque conglomeration, albeit without the red, yellow, and blue lions. Acer would be the black lion, in this metaphor, and Gateway would be the green one. Anyway, they’ll definitely have a sword.

Acer is acquiring Gateway for $710 million, creating a $15 billion company in the next year.

“This strategic transaction is an important milestone in Acer’s long history,” said J.T. Wang, Chairman of Acer. “The acquisition of Gateway and its strong brand immediately completes Acer’s global footprint, by strengthening our US presence. This will be an excellent addition to Acer’s already strong positions in Europe and Asia. Upon acquiring Gateway, we will further solidify our position as number three PC vendor globally.”

Acer makes a good laptop, but they have very little visibility here. Like IBM and Lenovo, the Asia company bought into the U.S. company as more of a distribution partnership, which means some of the hardware may start overlapping and new, interesting things might come out of Asia that Gateway alone might not have had the guts to pull through.

Acer to Acquire Gateway, Forms World’s 3rd Largest PC Company [Notebooks.com]