14 DAY TRIAL // Gateway released a significant number of laptops over the past few weeks and it became quite obvious that Acer, of whom it is a subsidiary, had special plans for the company. Sure enough, time passed and rumors arose, with one of them even suggesting that the latter aims to modify its branding scheme. Basically, Acer will have Gateway make almost all future ultrathin laptops as soon as its existing inventories of 13-inch to 15-inch products get digested.
Acer is already planning on adopting the Core i7-660UM, Core i5-430UM, Core i5-540UM and Core i3-330M that Intel released not long ago. In fact, it hopes to launch ultrathins based on them in the near future, though it will push them in the niche markets. Only the 11.6-inch Aspire Timeline series will retain the Acer branding.
This move comes soon after the same PC maker decided upon having Wistron make its 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch models. Prior to this, these machines were being manufactured by Quanta Computer and Inventec, respectively. They only account for roughly 10% of the notebook market, however, so the impact of the shift should be minor.
The possible reason behind the PC supplier's decision to keep the 11.6-inch Aspire ultrathins and TimelineX to itself is because they make use of the standard notebook platform instead of the ULV one. As for future plans, Gateway should unveil a 13.3-inch model and even a 14-inch one not long after.
Digitimes, the source of the rumor, did not give any specific date as to when this will happen. What it did mention was that the Taiwanese outfit would work towards enhancing power longevity and reducing thickness.
Gateway already surprised the market by being especially active over the past month. Netbooks, ultrathins and glowing touchpad-equipped laptops are a few of the more recent unveilings. All that remains is to wait and see how long it takes for the next generation of machines to come out.