Acer Inc (宏碁) will continue to produce netbook PCs, although rival Samsung Electronics Co reportedly plans to quit the market early next year, a top Acer executive said yesterday.
On Nov. 25, French Web site Blogeee quoted an e-mail sent by Samsung to its trading partners, saying that the South Korean company would discontinue its 10.1-inch netbook product range in the first quarter of next year following the introduction of a new strategy for the coming year.
The company will focus on -ultra-portable products in the 11.6-inch to 12-inch size range, as well as Intel Corp’s ultrabooks.
However, Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin (林顯郎) said the company would hold on to its netbook business because of demand from emerging markets.
“There is still demand for netbooks in developing countries such as Indonesia and India, where netbooks have become critical tools among students for information education,” Lin said. “Acer will absolutely keep making netbooks, and we expect that Intel will release the next version of its netbook CPU as early as February next year.”
“Some brands might decide to quit the business because they lack economic scale, so the future netbook market is expected to be led by two major players — Acer and Asustek Computer Inc (華碩),” he said.
Sales of netbooks accounted for between 18 percent and 20 percent of Acer’s total notebook shipments for the first three quarters of this year, higher than the industry average which is between 11 percent and 12 percent, Lin said.
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