Acer is no stranger to the whole tablet business, they’ve been releasing Android tablets since the dark days of Honeycomb and they’ve released some pretty decent tablets since then. Whether or not you’re a fan of Acer, it’s hard to completely dismiss them when it comes to the Android tablet business. It seems that just as Samsung is preparing their tablet line-up for 2013, Acer is doing the same. Acer’s VP, Scott Lin, has recently been caught confirming that a 10-inch Iconia A3 tablet is indeed on its way, and while there is no word yet on pricing or even specs, it would seem that Acer are back when it comes to Android tablets.
What is perhaps a little ambitious is that the company hopes to sell as many as 10 Million tablets this year. Acer have an interesting calculation of how such a figure will be met, they’re saying that they’ve already shipped 1.5 Million Iconia B1s, and hope to sell as many as 5 Million of the 8-inch Iconia A1s, with 2 Million of this unannounced 10-incher being sold as well.
These are pretty ambitious claims from Acer, who have never really experienced much success in the Android tablet realm and with ASUS (the folks behind the Nexus 7) selling 3 Million tablets in Q1, it doesn’t look like there’s much room for Acer to muscle in on, surely? Regardless, Acer seem set on shipping as many tablets as they can and they also have plans to start selling tablets running Windows RT. So far, sales of Windows tablets have been pretty poor so, we’re not surprised that Acer haven’t factored those into their 10 Million figure.
There’s been some encouraging numbers to come out of this past quarter regarding tablets on the whole, ASUS are shipping them by the millions and the sector grew overall, with Android taking more that 50% market share. This can only mean one thing: Android tablets are about to get better, and cheaper. Or at least, you would hope so. Let’s hope that Acer can bring something fresh to the tablet this year.
[Source: Engadget]