Acer CEO whips out iPad rival
Regular e-book reader too
Acer has shown off an Android-based iPad alternative.
CEO Gianfranco Lanci whipped out the 7in colour-screen gadget at a press event in Beijing today and promised to bring the unnamed product to market in Q4.
Oddly named website Shufflegazine took a snap of Lanci and Acer's new baby.
Acer's tablet and friend
Credit: Shufflegazine
Lanci apparently said that Acer may seek to offer the device through mobile phone networks, implying a model with integrated 3G connectivity. It also sports a Kindle-style Qwerty keypad.
The tablet's appearance comes three months or so after Acer Taiwan chief Scott Lin said the company had no plans to launch a gadget along the lines of Apple's iPad - even though a colleague - Jim Wong, head of Acer’s IT products division - had previously said the company was working on such a device.
Wong's claim was made a week before Apple announced the iPad, Lin's a few days after. Did Acer suddenly get cold feet, or wasn't Lin in the loop?
Whatever, the Q4 debut will mean Apple has plenty of time to ramp up production and expand the iPad's userbase.
Acer also announced today the Q3 release of LumiRead, a more traditional e-book reader with a 6in E Ink screen, 2GB of on-board memory and an SD card slot for more. ®
COMMENTS
so wrong...
"a Kindle-style Qwerty keypad." so a complete step back 5 years then....come on, the future of these type of devices is a touch screen not a iggly piggly type-with-a-cocktail-stick keyboard.....the kindle looks like a gcse design project by a one eyed lizard (called keith)...move on people....
re: so wrong
Ah, but there are people out there who wants devices with qwerty keyboards. Particularly the geeks (myself included). Reason being we all have had bad experiences with handwriting recognition and have been soured by the difficulty of using a on-screen keyboard without a stylus on early UIQ/WinCE devices. Plus, we have text thumbs (being the type that type long, properly spelled messages over SMS and not use aberrations). I myself avoid phones that doesn't have a qwerty keyboard for that reason alone.
Simple maths
Let statement P be
no plans to release + working on it (a device that is) = it is in development but marketing not yet involved
Let statement Q be
press release
Then P + Q = of course we are going to do it. Think we're daft?
trust
would you trust Acer with another linux product after they caved in to M$ on the netbooks? I'd be worried about lack of updates or support
A better Kindle.
Touch screen, check
Color LCD, check
Qwerty keypad, check
GSM/UMTS module, probably.
And there's a Kindle App for Android...
WANT!
