Acer to phase out netbooks in favor of tablets

“Add Acer to the growing list of companies with new tablets in the pipeline,” Mike Isaac reports for Wired. “The Taiwanese computer manufacturer has announced plans to release both a 7-inch and a 10-inch tablet in 2011.”

MacDailyNews Take: Apple leads. The rest follow at a great distance.

“The new tablets are intended to gradually replace the company’s line of netbook computers, said Acer’s Taiwan sales manager Lu Bing-Hsian. ‘That’s the direction of the market,’ Lu told Computerworld,” Isaac reports. “The company will still continue to produce netbooks, but will begin to phase out its range of netbook models while producing the new line of tablets.”

Isaac reports, “The tablets will run the Android OS (version unspecified)… Acer’s Lu declined to state price points and specific release dates for the new tablet offerings.”

MacDailyNews Take: Watch out, Google’s fake iOS is about to take a beating in public perception as it loses its main selling point on Feb. 10, 2011.

Isaac reports, “Acer’s tablet offerings also appear to completely reverse the company’s position as of only a year ago, when Acer’s Taiwan president Scott Lin said the company had no plans to pursue a tablet option, and that the iPad would be unlikely to impact the netbook market. ‘Apple has built [its] business out of carving its own niche,’ Lin told the DigiTimes last February, ‘which means that while Apple could see success with devices like the iPad, other players are unlikely to be able to replicate its result simply by copying.'”

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs makes shifting paradigms seem routine.