Acer jumping into Android tablet market with three models

 Acer has decided to join the masses in rolling out a tablet for any and every demographic the company can possibly think of with a line of new 4.8", 7", and 10.1" tablets. The company introduced the products during the Acer global press conference Tuesday, all of which will eventually run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) when they are released in 2011.

Acer started out its presentation by saying that everyone uses technology differently, and that the future showed a "variety of form factors and devices." Indeed, Acer seems to want to get into all of those markets at once with its new family of tablets, all of which will have dual-core Tegra CPUs and come with Acer's own UI. None of the products have a name yet, nor is their OS ready yet, but the company hopes to have them available to the public in the spring of next year.

The baby of the family will have a 4.8" screen with a resolution of 1024x480 which Acer described as "100 percent smartphone, 100 percent tablet." Those specs make it slightly larger than the already-large HTC Evo with its 4.3" screen, but quite a bit smaller than the 7" tablets out there. But don't worry, Acer has one of those too: the 7" Acer tablet will have a resolution of 1280x800 (just like its 10.1" counterpart). The 10.1" and 4.8" versions have front- and rear-facing cameras, though it was unclear from Acer's presentation whether the 7" version does or not.
According to Engadget's "hands-on" time with the devices, only one of the three would power on (apparently due to the lack of OS), and the one that did turn on was described as "very sluggish" aside from a blazing HD video.

With its new yet-to-be-named tablets, Acer will engage Samsung, RIM, Apple, and a slew of bottom feeders on the latest front of tablet wars. Research firm Strategy Analytics recently said that Apple currently owns 95 percent of the tablet market, but that number is sure to drop once the Android tablets start flooding store shelves.

Arstechnica.com

Acer Shares Rise After Company Replaces Dell as No. 2

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Acer Inc. climbed to a nine-year high in Taipei trading after it overtook Dell Inc. to take the second place in the global personal-computer market last quarter, according to market research firms IDC and Gartner Inc.

The company gained 1.2 percent to NT$82.70 on the Taiwan stock exchange as of 11:12 a.m., the highest level since Sept. 13, 2000, while the benchmark Taiex index added 0.6 percent.

Acer’s market share has increased to 15.4 percent, compared with Dell’s 12.8 percent, according to Gartner. Hewlett-Packard Co., which took the lead from Dell in 2006, remains the world’s biggest PC maker. Acer’s shipments surged 25.6 percent last quarter, the fastest growth among the top PC makers, buoyed by sales of low-cost netbooks.

“Acer can now aim for the No. 1 position,” said Bamboo Lin, an analyst at Sinopac Securities Corp. “Even though it’s gaining market share, it’s not compromising on its margins, so this is good for the firm.”

The Taipei-based company said on Oct. 12 that it expects net income in the three months ended Sept. 30 to reach NT$3.45 billion ($107 million), exceeding the NT$3.23 billion median of 12 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Acer’s operating income may reach a record NT$4.7 billion in the third quarter as consolidated sales rise to NT$167 billion, the highest ever, the computer maker said in an e-mailed statement.

Acer said it expects shipments to rise in the fourth quarter from the preceding three months, without giving estimates.

Dell has struggled to reach consumer laptop shoppers, the industry’s biggest source of growth, said Loren Loverde, an analyst for IDC. The company gets about 80 percent of its sales from business customers, she said.