Asus and Acer are in many ways just like Samsung and LG. They are both from the same country (Taiwan), and one is usually the more innovative one with higher quality products, and often taking the lead (Asus), while the other is quick to follow and tends to have slightly cheaper (but poorer quality) products (Acer). There is a rumor now coming from China Times, that the two companies might merge soon.
Neither Asus, nor Acer, have been doing that well in the Android market, unless you count Google’s Nexus 7 tablets that have been made by Asus so far, but other than that, their success hasn’t been that great, and Acer is doing even worse. In a time when the PC market is collapsing, it makes some sense for companies to consolidate by merging with each other, and I think the decline of the PC market, combined with the inability to make a large enough push in the mobile market is what is making these companies want to merge.
If the two were to merge, then they could push twice as much money behind a singular brand (so far both have had terrible brand names, so I hope they come up with new ones), which will increase their chance of success. As I mentioned, Asus is one of the companies that has the most consistent quality products from low-end to high-end these days, and hopefully they put Asus’ engineers in charge of the new product divisions.
I also think it wouldn’t be a terrible idea for them to consider buying HTC after that. HTC is also a Taiwanese company, and tends to make high quality aluminum products (just like Asus), has much better product brands and mindshare, right now, which is exactly what Asus and Acer would need to enter the smartphone market more aggressively, while HTC needs a bigger boost in advertising, which is where Asus and Acer could help.
So while I’m generally pretty skeptical about mergers, because they usually signal at least some level of failure (they wouldn’t do it, if it wasn’t needed), and more often than not, it tends to end up badly, it would be interesting to see what would come out of this “Taiwanese Trio”, with Asus’ CEO remaining as the CEO of the final company, because I think he’s actually pretty visionary, and much better than the other two from Acer and HTC, respectively.