Last week, Acer announced a wide variety of new devices including the updated Aspire V5 notebook line, the new Aspire P3 and V7 Ultrabooks, the Aspire R7 convertible laptop, and the Iconia A1 tablet. But Acer isn't stopping there. The company's senior vice president and president of its Greater China operations, Scott Lin, confirmed on Monday that Acer also plans to launch a revamped version of its Iconia B1 tablet thanks to "brisk" sales of the smaller tablet market.
According to Lin, Acer has sold 1.5 million units of the 7-inch Iconia B1 globally since it was launched in January 2013. The company plans to launch the updated version in June, and then a 10-inch version of its Iconia A3 tablet sometime in July or August. Also in June, Acer will launch its Windows 8 Pro-based W3 tablet, which briefly appeared on Amazon on Friday.
"This is our first year in the tablet market to post strong growth," Lin said at a news conference. "We started slowly in the tablet market, but we have enjoyed good progress."
The next-generation Iconia B1 will sport a new form factor design, an unspecified dual-core SoC, and 1 GB of RAM. The current version features a dual-core MediaTek 8317 Soc clocked at 1.2 GHz, 512 MB of RAM, a microSD card slot, 8 GB of internal storage, a 0.3MP front-facing camera and Wireless-N connectivity. It currently sells for $169 USD, whereas the new model is expected to sell at a higher price point.
Lin speculated that 7-inch models will account for 30 percent of the company's overall tablet business, while 8-inch models will account for 50 percent; 10-inch models will account for 20 percent. The company expects to ship 10 million units in 2013 and to capture 5 percent of the global tablet market.
An Acer tablet listing on Friday confirmed that Windows 8 Pro models smaller than 10-inches are on the way. The listing revealed the Iconia W3 sporting an 8.1-inch CrystalBrite LCD display with a 1280 x 800 resolution, integrated graphics with 64 MB of memory, 32 GB of internal storage, and 2 GB of RAM. Other features included Wireless-N networking connectivity, a 2MP camera on the front and a 2MP camera on the back.
Acer is also expected to release a next-generation 11.6-inch Chromebook in July, targeting students. Sources claim that Acer has halted shipments of its existing 11.6-inch Chromebook for the second half of 2013 due to the volume dropping to only 20,000 to 30,000 units in January. Up until then, Acer managed to push 150,000 to 200,000 units per month.
Acer is also expected to launch notebooks based on Android in 2H13 as well.
