Acer to Offer Smartphones for Free, Works on Android Handset

One of the personal computer makers that came up to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year with its own handsets was Acer, a company that unveiled four new devices at the show, which, it seems, will go on sale in the United States for free with contract agreements.

The Taiwan-based company seems quite determined to conquer the mobile phone market in the shortest time possible, and even announced that it expected to be able to occupy one of the five first places in the area within the following five years. Although it is a newcomer in the handset industry, it should be able to gain a lot of market share if it rolls out nicely featured devices that also sport attractive prices.

According to Aymar de Lencquesaing, president of Acer’s Smartphone Unit, AT&T and T-Mobile would be two carriers willing to add Acer smartphones to their lineups, mainly due to the fact that Acer is one of the world's largest providers of netbooks, devices that attract operators a lot, while AT&T already sells such a mobile machine, the Acer Aspire One.

At the MWC show this week we could spot the PC vendor showcasing four Windows Mobile-powered devices, Acer M900, Acer F900, Acer X960 and Acer DX900, handsets that are expected to hit the market running under the 6.5 version of the operating system. The company might bring these smartphones to the US market, but it’s also highly probable that it will unveil a new Android device for the market.

From what we've heard, Aymar de Lencquesaing confirmed that the company was working on handsets that are powered by other platforms than Windows Mobile, and didn't say no when the Android name came up. At the same time, Acer representatives in the vendor's display area at the mobile conference also confirmed that there would be a phone sporting Google's operating system coming to the market in the fourth quarter of the year.

For what it's worth, the US market will see Acer handsets either in the fourth quarter of this year or in the first one of 2010, although it is uncertain what platform the devices will come with.