Windows Phone Thoughts: Acer Outlines Smartphone Plans

"Acer will likely launch its first smartphone near the end of this year or early next year and it will be a Microsoft-based device, the president of the company said Wednesday. Smartphones will represent as much as 10 percent of Acer's revenue in the next few years, said Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer, at the company's first quarter investors' conference in Taipei... Acer's quick entry into the smartphone market comes largely due to its NT$9 billion (US$297.3 million) agreement last month to purchase handheld device maker E-Ten Information Systems of Taiwan. E-Ten has developed and sold several smartphone models over the past several years, including its Windows Mobile 6.0-based Glofish smartphone with GPS (Global Positioning System), in addition to other handheld electronic devices such as GPS devices and pocket PCs. Acer plans to focus on smartphones. E-Ten has already stopped selling PDAs, and GPS is already becoming a standard part of other devices instead of just on stand-alone gadgets, said Lanci. E-Ten has only sold its handsets directly to the retail market in the past. The boards of directors at Acer and E-Ten have already approved the deal, but they still face shareholder votes and approval by government regulators. The companies expect the deal to close in the third quarter of this year."



I cringed toward the end of this article. Either Lanci had his information wrong, or InfoWorld misquoted him. E-TEN hasn't stopped selling PDAs yet. Two new models, the M750 and M810, have just hit the market, and the V900 is still on track for a second half release. On top of that, the company's products certainly haven't been limited to direct retail market sales only as the article otherwise suggests. Nitpicking aside, Acer is hoping to complete the acquisition of E-TEN by the end of Q3, and have a new Windows Mobile phone out the door by early '09. Its specs is anyone's guess, although I sure hope they focus more on functionality and less on turning it into another Ferrari.