By Eva Dou
With PC sales stagnating, Acer is upping its game to try to edge into a fast-growing smartphone market.
Acer brought the Cloudmobile S500 to stores in Taiwan this week and is launching the phone in other parts of Asia and Europe throughout October.
First previewed at this year’s Computex trade show, the phone runs on Google ’s Android Ice Cream Sandwich platform and comes with a 4.3-inch display, a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, 8 gigabytes of internal storage and an 8-megapixel camera.
The Cloudmobile S500 is named to emphasize its preloaded “personal cloud” application called AcerCloud. The application allows instant upload of photos taken with the phone to your personal computer, with the phone self-deleting old photos after a month to free up memory. It also lets consumers access documents and music from their computers through their phones.
Providing synchronization of the phone and computer has been a popular strategy for PC makers trying to grab a piece of the fast-growing smartphone market with rival Asustek Computer providing Asus WebStorage, and Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group offering its own version called Lenovo Cloud.
Acer’s Cloudmobile S500 will sell for NT14,900 (US$510) with 8-gigabytes of memory. Competitor Asustek’s Padfone 2 phone, which was also launched this week and targets a higher buying segment, costs NT$17,901 for the entry-level 16-gigabyte version.
Acer’s smartphone ambitions faced a setback last month, when its planned China launch of a phone with partner Alibaba was abruptly canceled upon Google’s objection . However, the company says more phones are on the way, with the entry-level Acer Z110 expected to hit stores in Taiwan by the end of the month with a price below NT$6,000 (US$205).
Yuanta tech analyst Vincent Chen notes that brand image will be Acer’s biggest challenge as it seeks to gain a following for its mobile products. The company has traditionally been a producer of low-cost laptop computers.
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