Acer slashes tablet forecast, banks on notebooks

Acer today cut its 2011 tablet PC shipment forecasts by 60 per cent, but predicted a gradual recovery in its traditional notebook stomping ground. According to reports, Chairman and CEO JT Wang told shareholders at a meeting in Taiwan that he expects tablet sales of 2.5 to three million units for the full year, down from …

[Jeremy Chappell]

Reality bites

Not quite ready to kill the iPad then?

[LPF]

@Jeremy Chappell

shhhh everyone knows its a fad and when it fades away in 10 years time they will finally be right lol

[AndrueC]

Cause an effect

..is this taking into account the dumping of millions of dollars of laptops onto the European market?

Mine's the one (hopefully) with the cheap Acer laptop in the pocket.

[Alan Firminger]

This raises another matter

Why has The Register not reviewed the Acer tablets ? We await truthful criticism.

http://www.johnlewis.com/Electricals/iPad+_26+Tablet+PCs/View+all+Tablets/View+all+Tablets/Acer/-/Brand/21438/ProductCategory.aspx?s_kenid=2b68ae65-a0b2-2bc9-4bbc-00004ba807ad&s_kwcid=ps1906860

[Anonymous Coward]

Packard Hell

Redundancies from Packard Bell? I thought Packard Bell were a DSG/Dixons/Currys/Digital/PCWorld own brand dreamed up in the mid 90s to sell Pentiums with Bob-like front ends to consumers with a somewhat misleading name that aspired to be HP?

Acer are at least coming to their senses that iPads are more of a fashion accessory/occasional facebook updater then a fully usable home/office PC replacement.

[Michael Kean]

Seven Inches, Please :)

Why are these tablet makers ignoring the seven inch category? Big enough to be practical, small enough to fit in a pocket. These ten inchers look pretty but you can't carry them everywhere.

[Geoff Campbell]

@Michael

I absolutely agree. Apple are ignoring the 7" size because Jobs backed them into a corner on stage, and a lot of the others are following Apple. Fortunately, there are some exceptions, and the Galaxy Tab is still one of my favourite portable devices, precisely because it will fit in a pocket when wandering around airports and the like.

GJC

[Hayden Clark]

Pointless re-org

Why do these big companies decide that what's really wrong with them is that product 'A' isn't in business unit 'B' instead of finding out why they aren't making products that the customers want to buy. So massive amounts are spent on moving offices, new stationery and business cards, and all the rest of corporate flummery that takes the place of actually doing something.

[cloudgazer]

because sometimes that really is the problem

Different markets are different, have different priorities and require a different approach. Apple demonstrated with the iPad that successful tablets are more like big smartphones than they are like crippled notebooks.

There's a reason why a firm like Dell which has been very successful in the notebook market has never made headway in handsets or tablets, while firms like HTC have been successful in handsets but not really in notebooks.

Apple are successful in both but they maintain two different proprietary OSes so they keep the two businesses mostly separate, though they share a design team for the physical devices. But then that design team is itself unique within the CE industry.

Not every corporate reorganization is a success of course, maybe even not most - but it seems clear that the way Acer was going wasn't working, and given how fast the tablet and smartphone markets are growing this is a sector they really really want to break into.

[Eric in Milpitas]

I would have the Acer tablet... but

locked boot loaders

Time for heads to role.

I'd love to buy the A500 despite the cheap LCD but dont mess with my hardware like that.