[4] At the time of the merger, Packard Bell was the largest PC maker in the American market having overtaken Compaq, but increasing competition and losses led to NEC stopping its North American operations by 2000,[5][6] focusing squarely on European and other markets under its profitable Packard Bell Europe in the Netherlands,[7] which later diversified to products such as portable media players.

Universal Exports Group Limited a Hong Kong based manufacturing company licensed the brand name from Acer in Taiwan in 2019 for the SADC region.

Seeing the increasing commodification of the IBM Personal Computer standard by way of clone makers, or companies that manufactured systems which were plug- and software-compatible with the IBM PC architecture, the three businessmen decided they wanted in and reincorporated Cal Circuit Abco as Packard Bell Electronics in 1986, after Alagem had bought the Packard Bell name from Teledyne.

The three leveraged their business connections with Asian electronics companies formed through Cal Circuit Abco to contract the production of an IBM PC clone.

[14] As the hardware was largely bare-bones and derivative, the company could not market the computer based on technical merit, nor could they stand to profit from royalties on patents.

[12]: 387 Packard Bell was the first PC clone manufacturer to have the MS-DOS operating system and various pack-in applications preinstalled onto the computers' hard drives, saving customers the hassle of formatting the hard drive with a functional file system, while providing novices basic software to get a running start on the PC paradigm.

[12]: 388  The hard drives of Packard Bell's low-end line-up of computers were larger than the competition's hard-drive-equipped offerings, at 40 MB, while sold at a lower price.

This combined with the Packard Bell trademark's existing brand equity gave the company instant prestige, a rarity among newcomers to the PC market.

[15] Instrumental to Packard Bell's early success was their decision to distribute their systems to mass market retailers such as Sears, as well as wholesale clubs and consumer electronics stores.

In 1993, the company introduced Navigator, a shell replacement for Windows 3.1 intended for novice computer users that provides simple screens of large icons to launch their commonly used application software.

[26][b] That same year, Packard Bell acquired Active Imagination, Inc., of Westlake Village, California, a developer of edutainment video games for children.

[30]: 142  This innovation was intended to make installation of peripherals easier and predated the PC System Design Guide standard for color-coding connectors, introduced in 1999.

[31][32] Packard Bell's Chatsworth headquarters were seriously damaged in the January 1994 Northridge earthquake—the epicenter of which was located just a few blocks from their six-building complex—grinding operations to a halt and putting 1,500 employees temporarily out of work.

[22] A week after the earthquake, its sales offices and part of its production operations were moved to a 160,000-square-foot complex in Westlake Village, California, on an interim basis.

[35] Packard Bell saw gross revenues of $3 billion in 1994 and became the third-largest personal computer vendor in the United States, trailing Compaq and IBM.

[12]: 388–389  In 1995, they overtook Compaq for the number one spot in American PC market share, cornering 13 percent of sales in the United States, following a 37-percent rate of growth from the previous year.

However, unlike its rival companies, Packard Bell was judged not to have advertised the practice sufficiently in its warranties—Compaq, for instance, placed numerous stickers on boxes of their refurbished hardware indicating this status.

[40] Attorneys general across 12 states launched investigations into Packard Bell in June 1995;[41] the following month, Packard Bell settled nine class-action suits in three states, including California, providing reimbursement in the form of $50 worth of repairs for free in the short term, establishing a $1-million fund for monetary reimbursement in the long term, and changing its warranty policy.

In the United States, price pressure from Compaq and, later, eMachines, along with continued poor showings in consumer satisfaction surveys made it difficult for the company to remain profitable and led to Alagem's departure in 1998.

[51][52] In 1999, NEC began withdrawing the Packard Bell name from the American market, while keeping it in Europe, where the brand was untainted by allegations of substandard quality.