Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s fourth-largest PC maker, yesterday said it plans to launch wearable devices later this year, jumping on the bandwagon of popular mobile devices.
“We actually had demonstrated our products [wearable devices] to some of the company’s clients at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month,” said Peter Shieh (謝金全), vice president of Acer’s corporate account business division under the company’s Greater China regional operation department.
“The company is still developing certain types of wearable devices. We certainly aim to play a role in the new market,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a product launch event.
Photo: CNA
He did not said if the wearable products would include smart watches. In collaboration with telecom carrier Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), Acer yesterday launched its new smartphone product, called the Liquid Z5, in Taipei. The new smartphone runs on Google Inc’s Android 4.2 Jelly Bean mobile operating platform and is equipped with MediaTek Inc’s (聯發科) MT 6572 1.3 GHz dual-core processor, a 5-inch display and 5 megapixel camera.
Shieh said Acer also planned to launch smartphones supporting 4G this year to meet consumers’ needs for faster wireless data transmission. He added that Acer will consider collaborating with the nations’ top three telecom carriers — Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大) and Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信) — to help boost sales of its smartphones this year. Acer plans to sell between 140,000 and 175,000 smartphones in the home market this year, Shieh said.
That is between 100 percent and 150 percent more than 70,000 units of smartphones Acer sold in Taiwan last year, he added.
According to Acer’s internal financial report, up to 90 percent of the company’s smartphone sales were generated from telecom carriers’ purchases last year, Shieh said, forecasting that the percentage would remain the same this year.
“Given telecom carriers’ extensive sales channels, Acer has to collaborate with operators to sell its smartphone products in Taiwan and other countries as well,” Fubon Securities Co (富邦證券) analyst Ange Wu (吳淵傑) said by telephone.
Wu said Acer, like its largest domestic rival, Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), can make profits of between 20 and 30 percent of each smartphone’s sales price by selling smartphones to telecom carriers.
However, unlike China’s Lenovo Group (聯想), the world’s biggest PC maker, Acer has to differentiate its products from others and build strong brand loyalty to stay competitive in the smartphone market because “Lenovo has a huge home market that Acer lacks,” Wu said.
Separately, in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Acer yesterday said its former chairman and chief executive officer Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂) had resigned from the company’s board of directors before his term was to end in June.
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
On Ireland’s blustery western seaboard, researchers are gleefully flying giant kites — not for fun, but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a “revolution” in wind energy. “We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power,” said Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-meter kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a
Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準精密), a metal casing supplier owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday announced plans to invest US$1 billion in the US over the next decade as part of its business transformation strategy. The Apple Inc supplier said in a statement that its board approved the investment on Thursday, as part of a transformation strategy focused on precision mold development, smart manufacturing, robotics and advanced automation. The strategy would have a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), the company added. The company said it aims to build a flexible, intelligent production ecosystem to boost competitiveness and sustainability. Foxconn
Leading Taiwanese bicycle brands Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械) and Merida Industry Co (美利達工業) on Sunday said that they have adopted measures to mitigate the impact of the tariff policies of US President Donald Trump’s administration. The US announced at the beginning of this month that it would impose a 20 percent tariff on imported goods made in Taiwan, effective on Thursday last week. The tariff would be added to other pre-existing most-favored-nation duties and industry-specific trade remedy levy, which would bring the overall tariff on Taiwan-made bicycles to between 25.5 percent and 31 percent. However, Giant did not seem too perturbed by the
RSS