Acer is setting some lofty goals for its smartphone efforts; the company said it aims to more than triple sales, from 3 million this year to more than 10 million in 2011.
"We pushed aggressively into the mobile-phone market and it's working nicely," Gianfranco Lanci, Acer's president, told Bloomberg at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain. Lanci said Acer has sold 500,000 handsets since it got into the mobile phone business last year. It was only a year ago, at last year's MWC, that the computer maker unveiled its first phones, based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform.
Acer also offers Android phones, and Lanci said earlier this month that sales of the company's Android-powered Liquid were exceeding expectations. The company released the Liquid in December in Asian markets, and European operators are expected to begin selling the device this quarter. So far Acer has not released any devices in North America.
For a company that does not have much experience in the handset market, Lanci seemed confident about Acer's prospects. He said the firm will continue to grow market share while keeping handset margins between 15 and 20 percent. He told Bloomberg that the company will use its experience in the computer world to help its handset business. "We have done the same thing in the laptop market, we know how to keep costs under control and operate efficiently," he said.
For more:
- see this Bloomberg article
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