It is easy to confuse Asus and Acer. The names both have four letters and sound very similar, and they both even make similar-looking netbooks. Hence, when I saw this story, at first I thought we had already covered it.
However, it turns out Acer and Asus have gained yet another point of similarity. We covered Asus’s planned foray into the e-book reader market—but not to be outdone, Acer is planning one as well.
Bloomberg has the details. Acer is planning a “low-cost or free” Android-based app store, for use with its netbooks and smartphones running Google’s platform. It will add Chrome apps later, to go with the Chrome-powered netbooks it plans to introduce in the third quarter.
By the end of June, Acer will announce its first electronic book reader featuring a 6-inch monochrome screen, and distributed initially in up to five European countries, [Jim Wong, president of Acer’s IT Products division] said. The device would compete with Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook and Sony Corp.’s Reader.
Rather than going head-to-head with Amazon and B&N in America, Wong suggests, they will mainly target Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Rim where these American companies do not have as great a presence.
And also like Asus, Acer Chairman J.T. Wang mentions that Acer is working on its a tablet PC, and “will see what happens” after Apple’s release.
I get the feeling that the e-reader landscape will look very different in a year or two, littered with the discarded shells of e-book readers that never made it. Whether Acer’s (or Asus’s) will be among them is anybody’s guess.
