14 DAY TRIAL // Computer maker Acer reaffirmed recently its commitment to become one of the world's largest mobile phone makers in the following years. According to the company, it expects to be able to ship around 20 million smartphones each year starting with 2012, though for the following year it only estimates a number of around 2-2.5 million own-branded mobile phones to be sold.
The company already announced plans to become one of the top-five mobile phone vendors in the world, and it has released a series of handsets into the market this year, including the F900, M900, X960 and DX-900 (all of which went live in Taiwan on June 16 through Weblink International, notes DigiTimes), and has a few more ready to hit the shelves in 2009.
According to Aymar de Lencquesaing, president of Acer's Smart Handheld Business Group (SHBG), the company has great chances of gaining as much as 6-7 percent share on the mobile phone market. According to him, only 300 million units of the world's 4 billion mobile phones are smartphones at the moment, which means that the options in the area are wide.
In addition, Acer also says that the global demand for smartphones is expected to rise 15 percent each year during the following five years. While considering that it has enough room to become a top smartphone vendor in the near future, Acer also says that it will use its partnerships with telecom carriers around the world to promote its smartphones.
The company intends to release into the wild in the second half of the ongoing year a number of six new smartphones, stated Roger Yuen, Acer's SHBG vice president of Asia Pacific, who also added that one of the devices would come to the market with Google's Android operating system. In addition, it seems that Acer might also release TD-SCDMA-enabled smartphones that should be aimed at China's handset market.