Acer Betting Big on Ultrabooks in 2012

Posted 01/19/2012 at 12:10pm | by Paul Lilly

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Will this be the year of the Ultrabook? It's certainly looking that way so far. Ultrabooks debuted at the tail end of 2011 and were a predominant theme at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. Whether manufacturers can keep the momentum going remains to be seen, but the expectations are high, particularly at Acer.

Acer chairman JT Wang expects Ultrabooks to account for no less than a quarter of his company's notebook shipments this year, and perhaps as much as 35 percent, DigiTimes reports. If Acer attacks the segment with the same ferocity that it did netbooks, there's every reason to believe JT Wang's prediction will come true.

Sales of Acer's Aspire S3 Ultrabook totaled around 250,000 to 300,000 units in the first quarter after launch. In the second quarter of 2012, Acer expects to launch its second wave of Ultrabooks, along with even more models in Q3.

At the same time all this is happening, Acer is expecting its notebook shipments to drop 10-15 percent sequentially in the first quarter, but to pick up as the year goes on and ultimately post a 10 percent year-on-year growth rate.

Image Credit: Acer