Acer To Launch First Smartphone

Acer will likely launch its first smartphone near the end of this year or early next year and it will be a Microsoft-based device, the president of the company said Wednesday.

Smartphones will represent as much as 10 percent of Acer's revenue in the next few years, said Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer, at the company's first quarter investors' conference in Taipei.

People on the lookout for such a device should remember Acer, the world's third-largest PC vendor, owns several brands now, including Gateway of the U.S. and Packard Bell in Europe. Lanci said any smartphone launched by the company could enter the market under any of the brands it owns.

Acer's quick entry into the smartphone market comes largely due to its NT$9 billion (US$297.3 million) agreement last month to purchase handheld device maker E-Ten Information Systems of Taiwan.

E-Ten has developed and sold several smartphone models over the past several years, including its Windows Mobile 6.0-based Glofish smartphone with GPS (Global Positioning System), in addition to other handheld electronic devices such as GPS devices and pocket PCs.

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