Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer (宏碁) announced a move into the mobile phone market on Monday, unveiling its first range of high-end handsets at an industry event in Barcelona.
The group, best known for its laptops, unveiled eight “smartphones” that have Internet and powerful processing and memory capabilities as well as core phone functionality.
“The smartphone market is a natural direction of our long-term mobile strategy,” CEO Gianfranco Lanci said during a press briefing at Mobile World Congress.
The first four handsets are expected to go on sale worldwide in March or April, marketing manager Sylvia Pan said.
The touch-screen phones, demonstrated in Barcelona mostly in black with a design that resembles the top-selling Apple iPhone, will connect to the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection and run the Windows mobile operating system.
The move illustrates two trends in the mobile phone industry: the growing attractiveness of the high-end market for “smartphones” and the arrival of traditional laptop computer makers in this segment.
Laptop maker Toshiba already manufactures handsets and rumors abound that US rival Dell is preparing to launch its own range.
Sales of smartphone, are forecast to grow by 15 percent year-on-year for the next five years, Aymar de Delenqcuesaing, head of phones at Acer, predicted.
Lanci said that “for a large part of the world population the first opportunity to connect to the Internet will be via mobile computing, either through smartphones or netbooks.”
Acer had indicated its desire to enter the mobile phone market last year when it acquired Taiwanese handset manufacturer E-Ten (倚天).
Analyst Nick Lane of mobile phone consultancy Direct2 Mobile said that high-end smartphones were “still only a tiny percentage of the market,” but that this would change as prices come down because of competition.
“The high-end device of today will be the midrange device tomorrow,” he said.
The first Acer models will be called DX900, X960, M900 and F900.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
RSS