Scott Lin, Acer’s Senior Vice President and President of its Greater China Operations, told Focus Taiwan that the company has sold approximately 1.5 million Iconia B1 tablets since the product first went on sale earlier this year. He says the device will be refreshed later this year with a new design, dual core processor, and 1 GB of RAM, something I covered earlier this morning.
The real news is Lin’s confirmation that Acer will announce a new 10 inch tablet this summer called the Iconia A3. No word on what will make that device special, but you’ve got to think it’s going to come with some absurdly low price tag.
Lin goes on to say that Acer has plans to ship 10 million tablets during calendar 2013, which sounds like an ambitious goal, but Apple sold nearly 20 million iPads during the first three months of this year alone. Just throwing that out there for some perspective. As for how those 10 million units are expected to be broken down, Acer hopes the 8 inch Iconia A1 will be responsible for 50% of their shipments, the B1 will be responsible for 30%, and this as yet to be announced 10 inch A3 will have the remaining 20%.
Companies in the West should pay attention. Apple gave birth to the $499 tablet, and people figured out that in order to compete they should should make $300 tablets. Now Apple has a $330 tablet, and Acer of all people decided to dip into sub $200 levels. The B1 can be had for less than $150 if you shop around. The 7.9 inch A1 is $200. And this new A3 will likely be less than $300.
