Acer Ultrabooks reportedly selling at razor-thin profit margins

Acer ended 2011 with a surprising profit during the company’s final quarter and presented a positive outlook for the rest of 2012 at the turn of the year. Unfortunately, the Taiwanese manufacturer may need to shuffle its strategies again if Acer wishes to maintain an even larger profit in the quarters to follow.

According to The Verge, Acer representative Christoph Pohlmann claims that Acer Ultrabooks return very low profit margins. In fact, only the premium-priced higher-end Aspire S3 models can turn out any sort of profit at all.

Regardless of the bad news, Acer Global President Jianren Weng is still aiming for cheaper Ultrabooks dropping below $800 or even $700 in the future. Perhaps more surprisingly, the company would be ready to sell Ultrabooks at a loss in order to better compete with other vendors, specifically Apple. This is in contrast to the rather about face paradigm of wanting to sell notebooks at higher prices for higher margins that Acer expressed in early 2011.

Relative to other Ultrabooks, the Acer Aspire S3 is currently one of the least expensive in the market. The upcoming Aspire S5 is expected to be even thinner and lighter when it launches sometime this second quarter, although pricing is still a mystery.

Check out our full in-depth review of the original Aspire S3 here.

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