14 DAY TRIAL // Not too long ago, the e-reader market was composed of only a handful of devices, out of which Amazon's Kindle, the Nook and Sony's e-reader were the ones that saw most of the sales. However, during and after CES 2010, companies such as Samsung and Asus, among various others, revealed their plans to launch their own competing products, with the first having already made its first device available. Unlike those who see great potential in this area, however, Acer is reluctant to enter the fray until it can be completely sure that the marketing conditions are favorable.
Taipei Times reports that, according to Acer Chairman Wang Jeng-Tang, the company already has the required hardware fully prepared, but is not yet ready to join the fray. The reason for this, Wang said, was the fact that the e-reader market was still rather small and that it was still unclear whether e-readers would reach the mainstream. As long as e-book-reading devices remain a niche market, they will not be profitable for the Taiwanese company.
This announcement comes after Acer was also revealed to not have any intention of entering the slate-PC market, for similar reasons. The company aims to keep focusing on the ultra-thin and low-cost laptop segments, a venture that may become more profitable now that Intel has launched its Core processors. CULV laptops have generally been characterized by inferior computing capabilities, but Intel's latest chips finally enable such mobile PCs to have both a long battery life, as well as boast a good performance.
That Acer has been working on e-book readers has been known since late January, but the fact remains that such a device's marketing performance depends directly on the amount of online content available for customers to acquire and read. While waiting for availability of such content to improve, the PC vendor will keep an eye on the e-reader field while catering to its other business plans.