May
27

Acer Moves Into SmartPhone Game

Acer has announced plans to buy E-TEN, the company behind the glofiish range of Windows Mobile phones. The deal is worth around $290 Million and is expected to be completed through a share swap in the third quarter of the year.

Acer, the world’s third largest PC vendor, is no stranger to the Windows Mobile world itself, though it withdrew from the market last year. A manufacturer or traditional PDAs, the company had no smartphones in its range. Through the E-TEN deal it will gain a fast-growing company and a foothold in a smartphone market that is expected to grow by more than 30 per cent in the next three years. Any subsequent Acer glofiishes, meanwhile, will benefit from significantly greater clout in terms of marketing and distribution, and could well result in strong competition in a market currently dominated by HTC.

Acer has already taken steps to strengthen its position in the PC market in recent months, with the acquisition of both Gateway and Packard Bell. It’s likely that the E-TEN deal was made only with an eye on smartphones, but with plans for further exploit the trend for cellular network functionality in laptops.