Acer Going Into "Attack Mode" in 2012, Says Chairman

Acer is attacking the consumer market on four fronts: ultrabooks, netbooks, tablets and smartphones.

On Tuesday, Acer chairman JT Wang warned the opposition that his company has moved away from purely defending its position in the market as seen in 2011. Instead, Acer is now in full attack position and poised to deal a vicious blow from four specific angles: ultrabooks, netbooks, tablets and smartphones. The chairman made his virtual war cry during Acer's ceremony for the Lunar New Year.

Acer's strongest blow, according to JT Wang, will be on the ultrabook front. The company will reportedly launch four new models in 2Q12 alone, and then an additional, unspecified number of ultrabooks sporting a tasty pricetag of $699 to $799 USD the following quarter. Acer president Jim Wong added that the company will adopt a passive strategy over pricing, that going forward, user experience and demand will become the major selling points rather than a competitive price tag.

In the tablet sector, Acer plans to steer clear of the high-end and low-end markets ruled by Apple's iPad and Amazon's Kindle Fire respectively. Instead, Acer will attack via the mid-range avenue priced between $299 and $499 USD. Currently this specific market has an estimated shipment scale of around 10 to 20 million units, but that may change once Apple reportedly introduces the iPad 3 which addresses both the mid-range and high-end markets.

As for Acer's netbook assault, the company assumes that developed countries will sway towards the ultrabook form factor. However the shipment volume of netbooks in emerging countries is still growing, allowing Acer to maintain its 45-percent worldwide market share. But eventually that will come to an end, as the netbook and ultrabook sectors are expected to merge into one happy segment within the next 18 to 24 months.

Tuesday’s report did not offer details surrounding Acer's smartphone assault, so stay tuned.