Acer will re-enter the smartphones market in India early next year. This is part of the technology major’s global strategy to get back into the smartphone game with devices at lower price tags.
“Acer has been there in smartphones earlier. It is just a question of lower pricing with fresh products priced between Rs 8,000 and Rs 18,000,” Harish Kohli, Managing Director, Acer India, told Business Line .
Acer has already launched such products in markets such as Thailand, Indonesia and China, he said.
The company sold smartphones in the price range of Rs 9,000 to 29,990 till last year with products in beTouch and Liquid E Series based on Google Android platform. It also sold a few special edition of Liquid E Ferrari, available exclusively in glossy Ferrari F1 red.
According to the company, it sold around 40,000 units of these smartphones (total 7 models from both the series) in 2011 and had discontinued in end 2011.
However, now with the global launches happening and platforms such as Microsoft Windows 8, the company would bring in fresh devices for the Indian consumers.
Laptops for students
On the PC business, Harish Kohli said that after its successful venture with Tamil Nadu Government’s Elcot (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu) project in distribution of laptops to students, the company is expecting similar bigger deals from Uttar Pradesh and Goa Governments.
Acer India had supplied 2.14 lakh laptops under the Elcot project till now and has bid for the third round for a few more, he said.
“The Uttar Pradesh Government has also come up with a similar project and there is an opportunity of 1.50 million units of the total project. The bidding process is expected to happen on November 19. There are a few thousands units opportunity in Goa as well,” he said.
Acer, which is only in computer hardware, said it will continue its business in this segment for at least one year and may look at servers and cloud computing businesses like its competitors such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard.
“Large enterprises have the risk-based high-end servers where Acer is not there right now to offer such facilities.
“But, we have been going to such companies and they are our customers now in terms of desktops and laptops business,” he said.
He said the company has cloud-based solution, but that is only for Acer product buyers, for a few applications such as storing of pictures/ photographs for certain period as per the duration offered by the company.