Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s third-largest personal computer (PC) vendor, yesterday vowed to become the world’s No. 1 by 2011 as it continues innovations focusing on the notebook arena.
The company also unveiled the latest addition to its netbook family: the Aspire One 10.1-inch edition.
Scott Lin (林顯郎), president of Acer’s Taiwan operations, said he had high hopes for the low-priced netbook market, forecasting that aggregate global shipments from all vendors could reach 25 million to 30 million units this year and rise to 40 million units next year.
“In dollar terms, we’re talking about an estimated NT$500 billion [US$14.45 billion] global netbook market,” Lin said.
Without disclosing Acer’s netbook forecast for this year, Lin said the competition would be extremely tough this year as Hewlett-Packard Co (HP), Dell Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) enter the market.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Acer chairman J.T. Wang (王振堂) said netbooks now account for about 30 percent of Acer’s notebook sales, adding that Acer expects global sales of the mininotebooks to reach between 25 million and 35 million units next year, or 15 percent to 20 percent of its total computer sales.
Despite its initial success with the Aspire One 8.9-inch model, Acer said it was in no hurry to introduce its 10.1-inch version — which was launched one month late.
“The reason for the one-month delay is because we wanted to make sure all the top components are ready in this new model, from panel to battery and computer processing unit,” Lin said.
The new Aspire One 10.1-inch model retails at NT$17,200, while the company hopes to push down the price of the 8.9-inch model to around NT$11,800.
Lin said the new Aspire One model employs liquid-crystal-display panels produced by fifth-generation LCD fabs and are brighter and more saturated than Asustek Computer Inc’s (華碩電腦) S101 10.2-inch netbook, which uses LCDs produced by a 3G fab.
Acer’s panel providers are AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Samsung Electronics Co, Lin said.
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