Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin told DigiTimes “that designing an iPad-like device would not pose any technical challenges for Acer, but said such a product does not fit into Acer’s business model.”
Lin went on to say that it’d be tough to replicate the mojo that Apple has between a device like the iPad and the iTunes store. You can’t just copy the iPad without something like iTunes and the App Store, basically, and “few other makers, including Acer, have comparable experience in operating an online store.”
I wouldn’t put it past Acer to come out with some tablet devices running full blown Windows operating systems, though. Perhaps even Android, too. Acer’s a big company and if it sees a market for certain types of devices, it’s got the comparative advantage of being able to mass produce products efficiently and at relatively low price points.
I pointedly asked Acer president Gianfranco Lanci back in 2007 if his company would produce some sort of “aPhone,” meaning an iPhone-like smartphone, and he emphatically said, “No! Big no.” Fast forward a couple years and we’ve got the Acer Liquid smartphone and half of Acer’s 2010 smartphones to be sporting Android.
So, yes, Acer may have no plans to produce a closed-ecosystem tablet device but let’s not leave some sort of tablet device (or devices) out of the equation altogether.
Acer has no plans for iPad-like product, says Acer Taiwan president [DigiTimes]