Acer hoping to ship 5-10M tablets in 2013

Acer is looking to its variety of tablets running on Android and Windows 8 to help boost its business, and it hopes to ship at least five million units at the end of the year.

According to a report by Focus Taiwan Tuesday, the Taiwanese PC maker is expecting its low-cost tablets such as the Iconia B1 to account for 70 percent to 75 percent of its total tablet shipments in the quarter ending March 31, 2013. Acer President Jim Wong added in his investor conference call that the company has set an initial tablet shipment target of 5 million but aims to push it up to 10 million in the course of the year.

"We will have not only Android, but also Windows, tablets. There are a lot of things about them that we consider as innovations," Wong said.

Acer CEO J.T. Wang also pointed out it will introduce a full range of new tablets by the second half of this year. These include devices with 8- and 10-inch screens by the third quarter of this year, and are likely to cost between NT$6,000 (US$202) and NT$7,000 (US$229.50), respectively.

By contrast, the PC maker estimates the shipment of desktops, notebooks and netbooks will be flat compared with 2012 shipment figures. A more positive outlook would be single-digit growth on the back of improved demand during back-to-school seasons.

IDC released its monthly global PC shipment outlook last week, which expected February shipment figures to fall between 2 percent and 7.7 percent year-on-year due to weak demand from China.

Acer does expect adoption of its touch-enabled Windows 8 notebooks to grow though. It hopes to see these devices make up 15 percent of the total notebook shipments in the first quarter of 2013, and contribute up to 35 percent by the end of the year.
These projections come after the Taiwanese company announced its 2012 preliminary financial results on Tuesday, which showed consolidated revenue fell 9.6 percent year-on-year to NT$429.5 billion (US$14.7 billion).