Acer reportedly has huge amounts of unsold laptop stock to shift in Europe: more than 3 million units. As a result, the Taiwanese giant wants to quickly sell these devices before they become outdated. It's still unknown what the prices will be like, but they are expected to be quite competitive.
The negotiations with large retailers have already started: a spokesman at Dixons Retail told The Register: "We are aware [of the Acer situation] and awaiting more detail before making any decisions." It's important to note that this is not a price war: think of it more as a temporary sale to get rid of extra inventory. Unsurprisingly, Acer has not commented on the speculation of its extra stock.
Two months ago, we reported that Acer was ramping down production of its Aspire One netbooks to focus on manufacturing tablets. The Taiwanese system builder set an aggressive production target for April 2011, ordering 400,000 to 500,000 10.1-inch touchscreens for the month. Although Acer is scaling down its netbook production and it expects its PC shipments to fall, the company still intends to crank out traditional notebooks at the usual pace.
Earlier this year, there was talk that Acer would be phasing out netbooks for tablets. The company quickly issued a statement saying that tablets will not be replacing netbooks. Here is the full statement:
According to recent statement from Sales Manager based in Taiwan, Acer Inc. confirms that the company will not phase out netbooks in favor of tablets. Acer recognizes that the computer market is changing. As PCs are no longer only used to create content but are more and more becoming consumption tools, new devices and new form factors are appearing. This means the range of devices available to users is getting wider and tablets are just another piece of the mosaic. Therefore, they will find their space next to netbooks and notebooks.
Despite this, it seems that Acer is very much refocusing its efforts on notebooks and tablets, and leaving netbooks by the wayside. Although tablets may not be replacing netbooks completely, it only makes sense they are cutting in to sales, if only just a little bit.