Acer ponders Android smartphone
Android netbook too?
Acer has followed in the footsteps of arch rival Asus with talk of possible plans to launch an Android-based smartphone.
CEO Gianfranco Lanci said at the company's Q1 investor’s conference this week that Acer is “working on an Android solution for the smartphone”, according to a report by PC World.
Lanci added that the as-yet-unnamed phone would be launched later this year. Back in October, an unnamed source from inside Eee PC maker Asus claimed that the company had inked plans to launch an Android smartphone during the first six months of 2009.
But Lanci’s Android plans might not stop with a smartphone. He also confirmed that it’s “testing Android on a lot of different solutions”, prompting speculation that an Android netbook’s on the cards.
However, Lanci dampened such rumours slightly by stressing that “it's too early to say if we're going to see Android on a netbook in the near future”.
Why exactly? Because although the Google OS is "very, very good for communication and Web access and so on", he's not yet sure if it's right for traditional PCs. ®
COMMENTS
"Too early to say"
Companies are more likely to pre-announce new products if they don't compete with their existing products than if they do, as they don't want people to stop buying the existing product while waiting for the new. Premature pre-announcement has killed at least one computer maker (Osborne).
Acer won't mind people waiting to buy a phone until their own is ready (all gain, no loss), but if people postpone buying a netbook, this will hurt immediate sales and not guarantee future sales (they may eventually go for competing products instead).
So "too early to say" might not mean "we don't know yet" but only "we are not telling you yet".
"Google OS"
Cue lots of FSFtards demanding it be changed to "GNU/Google OS".
No-one except geeks cares about the tech
It's all about user experience. If you want to beat the most popular smartphone on the market or the most popular netbook on the market, you can:
1. Compete on price (with similar functionality).
2. Compete on user experience (with a premium price).
3. If you can pull off a better user experience AND at a lower price, the world will beat a path to your door, no question.
If you can't do any of the above well, good luck with that !
Boffins are the only people who care about the underlying technology in consumer electronics.
