Acer needs to hurry. Apparently, it's going to launch the first ever notebook based on an Nvidia Tegra 2 chip this month, and there only nine more days to go.

The - we suppose we have to say "smartbook", the moniker once given to ARM-based netbooks but sadly much out of favour in these tablet-centric times - will run Android 3.2 Honeycomb, according to company chairman JT Wang, speaking this week in Asia, Digitimes reports.

Acer won't ignore Intel, and will launch an "ultrabook" - the chip giant's term for skinny notebooks based in its chips - in December.

The battle of the 'books will really kick off next year, when, it has been forecast, some 7.6m ARM-based machines will ship, rising to a whopping 74m - 22.9 per cent of the laptop market - by 2015. ®

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