Acer to License Palm OS for Asian Market

Acer Inc., a Taiwanese computer manufacturer, said it plans to license Palm 's operating system as part of a plan to tap the market for handheld computers in Asia. Acer intends to make and sell the units in Taiwan and China. The two companies plan to make an official announcement on June 1 and Acer should begin shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.

According to Gartner Dataquest., Chinese buyers purchased 400 thousand electronic organizers last year, and Taiwanese 66 thousand. By 2003, these are expected to increase to more than 1 million in China and 200 thousand in Taiwan.

Acer will concentrate on offering wireless services. David Tsai, a marketing executive with Acer, said, "Just selling the PDA one by one, there's no money there. We are going to focus on the mobile data service. That's why Palm wants to join with us."

Acer has been in negotiations with Palm for over a year. For a while they considered writing their own OS or using another. They even demoed a unit called the SlimMate PDA that run a version of Linux but never released it.

On the Web:

Article Comments

 (7 comments)

The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. PalmInfocenter is not responsible for them in any way.
Please Login or register here to add your comments.

Comments Closed Comments Closed
This article is no longer accepting new comments.

Down

Oooohh noooooo... =(

I.M. Anonymous @ 5/23/2001 9:53:47 AM #
Personally I don't like the idea of Acer manufacturing Palm PDAs.

Our company used to acquire Acer PCs for our H.O. and branches' use but later on we started buying Compaq's and HP's. Acer has no match to these two computer manufacturers in terms of quality, durability and innovation. Believe me, I've had enough of Acer and I hate them. You can even ask my co-workers. Imagine a crashed harddisk and losing two years worth of data just because of a faulty power supply. How the h**l does this unit passed quality control? This is just one among my long list of Acer-caused mishaps.

Now, does this mean that Acer will *exclusively* sell Acer only PDA's to Asia and not allowing others to be sold here? Well I hope not. I'm an Asian -- it's not that I like western things and despise Asian ones. I will if it's from Acer.

RE: Oooohh noooooo... =(
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/23/2001 12:08:57 PM #
> Imagine a crashed harddisk and losing two years worth of data...

Sorry to be unsympathetic, but, actually, I'm shocked by the idea that you'd have two years worth of data that you cared about, which wasn't properly backed up. Folks, if it's vital, and it isn't backed up, don't blame the hardware or anyone else for your loss -- accidents will happen, but you have the means at your disposal to recover from them.

RE: Oooohh noooooo... =(
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/23/2001 8:40:19 PM #
Yes, I agree. If you have two years worth of important data. Shouldn't you be backing them up on regular basis? I would.

The problem you just described with Acer happens to all manufactures across the PC industry. not only Acer.

RE: Oooohh noooooo... =(
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/23/2001 10:01:56 PM #
A C E R S U C K S ! ! ! And I will let the whole world know this. Hey pinheads, i don't giv a crap about this backup issue. And I don't intend to glorify any brand but definitely Acer units are as brittle as a waffer sticks. I've worked with I.T. for years and our company has had a bad past with Acer's mediocre units. I really hope somebody better than this jokers manufacture PDA's for the Asian Market.

Bottomline...Acer = VTech.

RE: Oooohh noooooo... =(
I.M. Anonymous @ 5/24/2001 12:40:15 AM #
Well, like I've said, this is only one of my long list of Acer-caused mishaps. You leave me no choice but to really enumerate them all.

* an intermittent unit (Acer Ultima series) caused by a f*****g faulty cooling fan and made the processor heat up. The reason according to their technicians: insufficient power being supplied to the fan. What the technicians did: soldered a wire coming from another part of the motherboard going to the fan's power source.
* how about a harddisk that keeps on failing and won't boot up. The culprit: faulty power supply. This is a different unit from the one I mentioned.
* three (3) units of different Acer models that hang and crash due to incompatible memory cards. They are manufacturing "branded" pc and their hardware are supposed to be compatible right? What kind of quality control do they have?
* about the 2-year's data thing: the motherboard was replaced *THREE* times and still bogs down after a week or two. -- AND ABOUT THE BACKUP THING... Well tell that to my boss. He isn't as computer literate as you and I kept on convincing him of buying a backup device but to no avail. THAT'S WHY I LEFT THE DEPARTMENT BECAUSE HE WOULDN'T LISTEN.
* and many more. (I should have kept a journal just for those Acer things. I didn't know it would in a handy just like now.)

And you tell me that the same things happen to ALL pc manufacturers. I agree but I had MORE problems with Acer than with any other pc brand including clone ones.

My issue is really about Acer distributing their (probably cheap) PDAs to Asia. Well if you still prefer Acer then wait for its PDAs and get yourself one. -- AND DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU.

This reminds me of Apple...

Legible @ 5/24/2001 10:26:53 PM #
Once upon a time, Apple got real scared that Microsoft and the hordes of PC clones are going to squash them out of existence, and finally took the step of licensing Mac clones. There was even talk of turning Apple into a software company. But it didn't happen.

For a while, everyone is happy. The clones did well, and contributed to MacOS's overall market share.

However, later Apple found that the clones are eating into its high margin DTP biz by offering better boxes for cheaper prices, and Apple's Taiwanese licensees threaten the mass market as well. Meanwhile, the Wintel steamroller continues unabated, eventually checking any initial gains made by the Apple camp. Thus while the Apple/Mac clones overall held on to their market position, Apple as an individual company did worse, with sales being cannibalised at both ends.

Needless to say, Apple eventually pulled the plug. Now, though still well loved by fans and occasionally profitable, Apple can no longer become the force it once potentially could have been.

If Palm doesn't heed this historical precedant, then I'm very sorry that M$ may be able to do it to them as what it did to Apple.

Acer in Asia

Graffiti @ 5/25/2001 7:57:34 AM #
Acer does not have a reputation for reliability - both hardware and service - here in Asia. Somehow, failure rates on their machines are higher than of other manufacturers. Walk into any Asian/local corporate office - you'd be hard-pressed to find an Acer. This observation is from my experience as a corporate network systems consultant.

I know for a fact that it is the exact opposite in the US - there are enough Acer product reviews from US magazines to testify to that, especially their laptops.

A different set of QC standards, perhaps?

Frankly I am just as taken aback by this piece of news. Fortunately (I hope!) we Asians will continue to have our choice of PalmOS-based hardware from other manufacturers. I personally wouldn't touch an Acer in Asia with a 20-foot pole.

Top

Account

Register Register | Login Log in
user:
pass: