Acer chairman faults Dell and HP for weak adoption of ultra-thin notebooks

Acer chairman JT Wang knows what consumers want their notebooks like: ultra-thin and with lots of battery life. Acer has put out quite remarkable models in their Timeline-series of notebooks, and they're enjoying a fair number of sales, but Wang believes that the numbers could be bigger if only American companies like Dell and HP wouldn't get in the way. Acer's Wang blames Dell and HP for preventing ultra-thin notebooks from becoming the mainstream product in the market by bringing down prices of its own non-ultra-thin mainstream notebooks to as low as $399. The small price gap is what holds back adoption of ultra-thin notebooks, which are usually underpowered (for the sake of prolonging battery life) compared to current mainstream notebooks. Acer is currently planning on releasing more ultra-thin models in the future, but if Dell and HP won't let up, there's a chance that we might not see these products ever released at all.

Source: [DigiTimes]

Acer netbook with Google's Chrome OS coming in 2010

Acer is reportedly planning to launch a Google Chrome OS-based netbook in the second half of 2010, as they are already developing one and have been since mid-2009. This is according to industry sources cited by the Chinese news site DigiTimes, which also mentions that Acer chairman JT Wang expressed confidence in the idea that they will launch the first Chrome OS-based netbook in the market. Hardware-wise, I don't think there's anything worth looking forward to about this upcoming netbook from Acer, since Chrome OS is design to run on low-powered devices. But you never know what the Taiwanese computer company is cooking up, so keep watching out for updates.

Source: [DigiTimes]

Acer TD-SCDMA smartphones heading to China, Nokia Maemo smartphones likely to show up soon

Not mentioned among the manufacturers expected to launch Android smartphones at the beginning of 2010, Acer has reportedly placed orders for TD-SCDMA smartphones on Foxconn. It is not specified what kind of smartphones Acer has ordered Foxconn to make for them, but it is likely that these will run the open-source Android operating system.

Nokia is also mentioned in the same report from which the above information is taken, and how Foxconn and Compal Communications are currently competing head to head for Maemo-based smartphones orders from them. So the Nokia N900 may arrive sooner than you think.

Source: [DigiTimes]