Acer’s Upcoming Android Tablets May Mark Company’s Netbook Phase-Out
Jan 18, 2011 05:00 PM EDT by
By this time in 2013, an Acer netbook could be nothing more than a memory.
The company told Computer World that its new line of tablets - 7-and 10-inch slates with Android’s Honeycomb OS for tablets and set to debut the first half of this year – will initiate a paradigm shift in the company’s approach to smaller notebooks. Namely, “they are aimed at phasing out netbooks,” an unidentified sales manager told Computer World.
Erasing the drawing board on its netbook lineup may sound extreme, but Acer’s new tablets (demo’ed briefly in November) may feature Intel’s next-generation Sandy Bridge processors. Those CPU’s are typically reserved for faster computing in full-sized Windows 7 notebooks and netbooks, but Acer will feature the chips inside the types of Android tablets that otherwise would be powered by low-voltage ARM chips.
The decision to pair tablet devices with more robust Intel processors may explain Acer’s plan to phase out netbooks in the future: if tablets are packed with netbook power, who needs a netbook?
Computer World’s source credited the decision to the current state of the mobile device market, which currently skews upward for tablets while netbook sales are declining.
But the tablet market isn’t even a year-old, and though a fleet of tablets are planned for 2011, the market for the touch-ready, highly-mobile gadgets could cool just as suddenly as netbooks did in 2010. Of course, that will depend on the performance and practicality of the oncoming tablet fleet. And we won’t know that until Acer and others begin releasing them.
Via Computer World
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