Interview with Acer: Nvidia Ion, Wireless Plans, and Smartphones

Acer's VP of Product Marketing reveals a few of Acer's plans for the coming year.

Taking a large piece of the netbook market share in 2008 shows that this Taiwanese company is not to be looked down upon. The launch of the new 10 inch Acer Aspire One at a $349 price tag shows just how serious they are in maintaining this lead. The competition is definitely on! In order to do this Acer must have some kind of plan. An interview by www.laptopmag.com featured Acer's Vice President of Product Marketing, Sumit Agnihotry. They inquired about the growth of the Acer Aspire One and what the company plans in terms of mobile computing over the course of the next few months.

Agnihotry revealed a few points of interest. One point is that the $99 Radioshack Acer Aspire One is only the start of bundling integrated mobile broadband plans with the company's netbooks. They are currently working out ideas to offer hourly plans so that customers can have more flexibility. Secondly, Acer is also planning on integrating Nvidia's Ion platform for their products aimed for the second half of this year.

Agnihotry stated that they had expected the netbook to take 4 to 5 percent of the notebook market share but nowadays its all the way up to 12 percent. They believe in the near future this market share will be up in the high teens as netbooks become more and more connected. That's why Acer is pushing their products forward to be similar to a smart phone device utilizing embedded 3G. Acer's trial run in December with AT&T and Radioshack revealed that while being connected was definitely in high demand, customers wanted different connectivity options. Not everyone wanted unlimited 3G service.They will be working with wireless providers to come up with some sort of hourly or daypass connectivity similar to a data plan on today's cellphones. 

In addition, Acer is also looking at pairing the Atom platform with larger displays while keeping them at an affordable price. Agnihotry revealed that trends show that customers want thinner, lighter and systems with long battery life. They will also be looking at other ultra low voltage processors for the pair-ups.

Due to their long standing partnership with Intel, Acer has decided to pursue the Nvidia Ion platform. However they will also be looking at what the AMD Neo platform has to offer. 

So far it looks like Acer has quite extensive plans for the future. Only time will tell if these plans actually work out. For further details about their other plans please read the Acer interview on www.laptopmag.com.