Thursday, Oct 03, 2013
Dubai: Acer is back in the brutal smartphone race with a bang and is looking at a concerted push into mobile computing but with a rather cautious approach.
“If any vendor is not in the smartphone space and in the IT space will have real problems in the coming years. During the next few years computing will become more mobile with the deployment of LTE,” Allen Burnes, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) vice-president for Acer smartphones, said.
“We have challenges at Acer same as rest of the IT vendors. We were not in the smartphone business for quite some time as it needed a revamped product conception. So the last two years we were realigning our business with technology. This year we relaunched our smartphone models,” Burnes said.
Acer uses MediaTek, a Taiwanese designer of chip sets, for entry-level to mid-level smartphones and Qualcomm processors for high-end models and it is in talks with Intel.
“We are heavily into Android operating system but we are having a dialogue with Microsoft for Windows phones. Right now, Windows is not in our portfolio as the market is not growing as Android,” he said.
Hamza Saleem, a senior analyst for mobile devices at IDC, said that 60 per cent of smartphone volume in the region is powered by Android operating system. The operating system is going to be intense with new contenders like Tizen and Firefox entering the fray.
Burnes said that 10 per cent of its total workspace is in research and development as users are becoming more smarter.
He said time to market is important. Acer used to launch products in the Middle East between three to six months late when compared to Europe. That is not something “we should not do in this current environment.”
According to research firm International Data Corporation, two out of every five phones sold in the Middle East are smartphones. Smartphone volumes were up 16.4 per cent in the second quarter of this year when compared to the same quarter last year.
Last year, Acer relaunched its handsets in several markets across the globe.
“We are now in Thailand, Taiwan,China, Indonesia. This year we launched in Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy, Russia, Ukraine and South Africa,” he said.
“We will launch three models in the next two quarters — Liquid Z3, Liquid S1 and Liquid S2 — with prices ranging from Dh449 to Dh2,449.
Liquid S2 is the second phone capable of recording in ultra high-definition video (4K) after Samsung Note 3.
“Acer touch-device portfolio will be between 3.5-17 inches. In the smartphone category, Acer will launch between 3.5-inch and five inches while phablet (smartphone-tablet) combo will have 6.1 inches,” Burnes said.
By Naushad K Cherrayil Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
