Acer has stressed the importance of delivering a touch experience to consumers through Windows 8 products.
Jerry Kao, Acer’s associate vice president of consumer business unit, said consumers are entering an age where the quality of the “tactile experience” is effectively more significant than the amount of RAM or speed of the CPU. He also predicted that tablets and laptops will merge into a single entity soon, as has been showcased through a variety of hybrid products powered by Windows 8.
“Windows 8 is a great opportunity for us, because it makes the world a more touch-friendly place. Acer understands this, and we want to be the first to bring this capability to the market. So we are very aggressive in terms of touch product promotion,” said Kao.
"We have a range of All-in-One PCs, Iconia tablets, notebooks in various form-factors – the entry V series, and the flagship S series. In terms of product offering, we are already the most aggressive company,” he added.
Kao continued on to explain why Acer has invested a considerable amount of money and time into touch technology. “In addition to a wide product portfolio, our touch experience is much smoother and much more responsive that that of the competitors. Today, the focus has shifted away from the demand for faster CPU and more RAM. The new battlefield is the touchscreen technology – how smooth and precise it is, how enjoyable the touch effect is. We have invested a lot of time and money into this technology, to stay ahead of the competition.”
Acer boasts a range of touch-enabled devices. Prior to the launch of Windows 8, the firm announced its W700 Windows 8 11.6-inch tablet PC, 7-inch Iconia A110 tablet, W700P, W510P Windows 8 Pro tablets, as well as ultrabooks and notebooks.
“The reason we offer so many products is simple: our customers want different things. For example, with S7, our surveys have shown that most of our female customers want an 11.6-inch laptop, while men want 13-inch. So we offer both. There’s a lot of conflicting feedback like this. Unfortunately we have certain resource limitations, otherwise we would offer even more different devices.”
Despite Acer's confidence in Windows 8-powered touch-enabled devices, it has delayed its Windows RT plans in order to see how Microsoft's Surface tablet performs.
