Acer Planning to Go On the Offensive in 2012

Posted 01/31/2012 at 10:13am | by Paul Lilly

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There are two trains of thought in the field of competition. One is 'The best offense is a good defense,' and the other is simply the reverse. Acer plans to implement the latter in 2012 as it goes into attack mode with a barrage of Ultrabooks, laptops, tablet PCs, and smartphones, Acer chairman JT Wang reportedly indicated at the company's ceremony for the Lunar New Year.

Based on Wang's comments and Acer's roadmap, Acer is positioning itself to be the most active participant in Intel's new Ultrabook category, DigiTimes reports. The OEM plans to launch no less than four new models in each of the second and third quarters of 2012, with aggressive prices ranging from $700 to $800.

This a different strategy than the one Acer employed in 2011 when it was content to sit back and defend its position in the market place, and it extends beyond notebooks. In the tablet PC category, Acer feels Apple and Amazon have the high-end and entry-level markets locked up, so it's going to attack the middle ground with mid-range devices ranging from $300 to $500. By Acer's estimate, it will be able to ship 10 million to 20 million mid-range tablets in 2012.

What about netbooks? Acer isn't abandoning them, not yet anyway. But over the course of the next 18-24 months, Wang says the netbook and Ultrabook segments will merge into one.