PC vendor Acer Inc (宏碁) said on Tuesday it had won an order to supply a local restaurant chain with tablets that diners can use to order food.
The restaurant chain is to buy about 1,000 to 2,000 of Acer’s 7-inch Android tablets, said Samuel Chang (張世欣), director of the marketing division of Acer’s Taiwan regional operation.
However, Chang declined to name the business.
Starting next month, customers at the chain’s 20 to 30 restaurants around the country will be able to use the tablets to place their food orders, Chang said.
“It seems like many enterprises have started thinking about how their salespersons can adopt more portable solutions,” he said at the launch of Acer’s new 8-inch tablet, which retails for NT$7,490 (US$249).
Chang said that while Acer is discussing other commercial projects, Taiwan’s consumer market remains the company’s main target for its tablet products in the second half of the year.
The company has forecast a 40 percent quarterly growth for domestic sales this quarter, including laptops, desktop computers, 2-in-1 hybrid devices, tablet PCs, smartphones, monitors, projectors and servers, Chang said.
On July 3, Acer teamed up with two leading sales agents in Taiwan — Synnex Technology International Corp (聯強) and Weblink International Inc (展碁) — to market its eight major product lines.
Acer said the cooperation would expand its sales network in the country to a total of about 5,000 distributors and thus reach millions more domestic consumers and more than 1 million local businesses.
Meanwhile, HTC Corp (宏達電) on Tuesday declined to comment on a foreign media report that it is working on two more tablet computers in addition to its anticipated 9-inch premium device in cooperation with Google Inc.
Tech news site BGR cited a Twitter post from famous leaker “@evleaks” as reporting on Monday that besides the Nexus 9, HTC might also launch tablets codenamed “T7” and “T12.”
The report did not reveal further details.
The HTC-Google Nexus 9 is expected to go on sale in this fall, priced from around US$399.
It will feature a 2K display, a 64-bit processor, 2GB of RAM, up to 32GB of storage, an 8-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization and the latest Android L operating system, the report said.
HTC declined to comment on the new products, but suggested that it might return to the tablet market at some point.
“We can’t comment on the details of our roadmap, but we have previously confirmed that we continue to watch the tablet market with interest and will only introduce a new product to any category if we feel we can offer real improvements over the current competitors,” HTC said in an e-mail.
HTC, which manufactured Google’s first Nexus smartphone in 2010, has launched only two tablets of its own in the past, but they have proved unpopular due to their relatively high costs.
The HTC Flyer was unveiled in April 2011, priced at US$499, while the 4G LTE-enabled HTC Jetstream was launched in September that year at US$849.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS