Acer Joins Forces With Quanta to Explore Tablet PC Market

Taipei, May 20, 2010 (CENS)-- Acer Inc., the world's second-largest PC brand now, has joined hands with Quanta Computer Inc., now the largest maker of notebook PCs in the world, to cash in on the rising market demand for tablet PCs, and has reportedly placed a contract order for its model to the latter, according to industry sources.

The tablet PC is installed with Google's Chrome OS and will be officially debuted by the end of this month. Industry insiders noted that Acer, optimistic about explosively increasing demand for wireless broadband services, will reinforce price promotion to quickly gain ground in the emerging segment, and hence decides not to adopt Wintel's (Windows and Intel) platforms in its tablet PCs to cut production costs. Accordingly, Acer's tablet PC will sell for only around NT$10,000 per unit.

Success of Apple Inc.'s iPad in the U.S.'s consumer market has aroused PC brands' concerns about the segment for table PCs, with a couple of them, including Acer, Asus and Samsung, to unveil their own-brand models this year. For example, Asus is scheduled to debut its model Eee Pad on May 30, which will be officially displayed at Computex Taipei 2010, slated for June 1 to 5, while Samsung will also launch its S Pad this month.

In addition, huge business potential seen in the emergence of table PCs has also attracted handset developers, namely RIM and Nokia, join the segment, with the former reportedly to debut its model in December, and the latter in September.

Industry insiders indicated that the recent tablet PC boom in the global PC industry is mainly due to the iPad blockbuster, which makes leading PC brands aware of Apple's evasion into the global PC market and hence forces them to take actions to counter the latter. Besides, they added, promotion of table PCs will also help them to offset declines in sales of netbook PCs.