Acer Smart Wearables Will Be "Distinctive"

An unnamed Acer Inc. source recently said that the company plans to jump into the wearable tech market in the second half of 2014. The gadget will be "distinctive," standing out from the competition.

In a report posted on Monday, the unnamed Acer source said that solutions provided by Sony, Samsung and Google will not be the only form factors. The device in question could possibly be a necklace that may sport body temperature sensors and connect to a smartphone via Bluetooth, or work independently.

"We hope we could have a distinctive product when we introduce it. So we will not launch it in a hurry during the first quarter and will likely make it available globally in the second half," the source told CNA.

Acer recently admitted that the company showcased a number of wearable tech devices to some of its clients earlier this month at CES 2014. In speaking with Taipei Times, Peter Shieh, VP of Corporate Business Accounts in Taiwan, said that Acer is currently working on "certain types of wearable devices."

In addition to Shieh, Acer's ST Liew admitted back in June 2013 that the company was looking in to jumping on the wearables bandwagon. "I think every consumer company should be looking at wearable. Wearable isn't new ... it just hasn't exploded in the way that it should," he said in an interview.

The biggest problem is not how to create a device on the technical level, but what to make that has consumer appeal. The trick, he said, is in making the right trade-off between hardware and what a consumer expects in a wearable.

"Is a day battery enough? It might be, if the charging mechanism is easy. You take off your watch at night, throw it on the side and it inductively charges," Liew said. "So are we thinking along those lines? Yes, absolutely. You should expect something like that from us as well next year."

Perhaps we'll see something at MWC 2014 next month.