Technical specifications also include a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 3.6-inch, 800×480 touchscreen and five-megapixel camera provided with autofocus. The phone will have 8GB of storage onboard and will be able to share media over local networks through DLNA. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios are also present. The device supports HSPA 3G on either 850/1900MHz or 900/2100MHz bands and also on quad-band 850/900/1800/1900MHz GSM.

The phone will cost €299(equivalent of $420) in European countries without a contract. It will ship just in time for the holidays in two colors, dark blue and white. It is not sure that the phone will arrive in North America, although the presence of the 850MHz and 1900MHz bands may hint it could come to carriers like AT&T, Bell, Rogers or Telus in Canada. It is known that Rogers is the only carrier to pick up smartphones from Acer in North America.

These sources behind narrowed timeframe also hinted that the A100 was especially designed for women. The smaller size allows users to hold it only with one hand and control it entirely with the other. Acer thinks that this is more convenient for female owners than a 10-inch tablet (this would more often necessitate a grip with both hands).

However, pricing is still unknown. Acer’s A100 pre-order seen earlier this month had the tablet costing the equivalent of $485 in the United Kingdom. The Iconia Tab A500’s USA release will see the larger tablet cost $450, making a $400 or even lower price more likely.

The notebook’s design is unique as it is the first device of the kind which uses a touchscreen instead of the traditional hardware keyboard and a trackpad. Acer uses it for some tricks like showing a single Windows desktop or an application across both screens. It is also possible to use the bottom half for particular utilities through gestures. When someone puts five fingers on the bottom a ring is triggered which lets the user change settings, assign custom gestures to certain tasks, or simply clip content from a website and add it to a scrapbook or journal. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are unified in a single feed by means of Social Jogger from the Liquid metal. Some applications are upgrades specially designed to make use of two screens, like TouchBrowser, which is self-explanatory.

The Iconia Touchbook has been present at CES and visitors could see its clever, niche design. The keyboard can be brought up by placing both palms or all ten fingers on the bottom and is large enough and very alike an enhanced keyboard of the iPad. The price includes a relatively modest premium for the dual touchscreen. However, several specialized applications are not exactly lures from either conventional notebooks or the iPad. The design of the new device is mostly remarkable for those customers who prefer a regular notebook design provided with touch functions as well as those who appreciate the audacity and the execution of the concept.

Acer is supposed to ship a reduced range of models but it would devote more attention to those it ships and in no case would the company quit netbooks.

There is no information about how accurate Acer is. Netbook sales have seen a rebound during the fall, with an increase of 8.4 percent over the summer, which meant 7.74 million mini PCs, as Digitimes Research shows. The gain was however attributed to both price cuts fueling demand and a bigger demand from developing countries. The overall performance of Acer may have been very poor according to early estimates. They have shown important market share drops during the fall, mainly in the United States.

It was not directly stated, but comments were stimulated by rumors of Acer looking towards tablets and exiting netbooks and a belief that other tablets led by Apple’s iPad would push companies out. Many firms, once relying heavily on netbooks, among which ASUS was a pioneer, have put increased attention on tablets, considering that netbooks were almost out of competition. The phenomenon was in part due to critics like Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, who have postulated that netbooks did not offer a different experience from low-end notebooks, while tablets were more unique and also more portable devices.

Acer plans multiple tablets for 2011, which include the Iconia Tab A500 and also 4.8-inch and 7-inch models. Most of them will run Android, but one model is expected to use Windows 7.

The iPad’s sales became smaller during the last few weeks, according to Acer’s CEO, but no evidence was provided.

Lanci also added that Acer was supposed to take advantage of its growing PC business and retail distribution to successfully compete with any other company, including its rival Samsung. The creator of Galaxy Tab as well as others usually recurred to traditional carrier outlets, while a computer designer detained more suitable retail channels. Getting deals for the Alivestore was supported by extensive contacts and Acer hoped to keep users loyal to its brand through it.

Since the company had a relatively late start in this market, its expectations are aggressive. Currently, 95.5 percent of the market is owned by Apple’s iPad and no competition in tablets from Acer is expected until next April, which means a whole year after the appearance of the iPad in stores. Acer’s officials also insisted that netbooks would continue to live in spite of sales dropping off and retailers dropping prices in order to maintain interest. Acer’s chairman JT Wang even characterized the iPad as an irrational rage that would soon determine buyers to come back to Acer’s PCs.

Apple does not show signs of slowing sales. The company has taken some precautions by striking part of its earliest deals to have the iPad subsidized with a 3G service, like the contracts concluded through KT in Korea. An Orange UK deal is also expected.

Acer’s executive was however cautious about the future, as he said netbooks would probably not gain any share in 2011, although Acer expected to reap benefits. As Dell and Hewlett Packard are not believed to push as hard for sales as they did before, only ASUS would claim the largest part of what would remain.

Reports from the same area contradicted Lin’s sayings the very same day. PC makers and resellers are dropping netbooks’ prices as a reaction to the iPad. For example, the Android and Windows dual-booting netbook of Acer, the Aspire One D255, has now a price of $288 equivalent, lower than before. The 10-inch Lenovo IdeaPad is now $317, while the ASUS 10-inch Eee PC has also dropped the price and costs now $282. Only a few systems, which are not completely new, have now prices exceeding $320.

Acer’s faith in the Atom N550 was also disputed, because many companies were not promoting the faster processor actively.

Other signs also contradict Lin’s beliefs. For instance, Best Buy has noted a drop in netbook sales by about half after the iPad’s intention of expanding sales to all its chains. Analyst Kathy Huberty from Morgan Stanley also noted that growth has reversed in the United States starting more or less in April, when the iPad debuted.

He renewed the example of the Mac and suggested it was marginalized in a quite similar process. By supporting Windows as an open platform, competitors succeeded to evolve and to be larger than Apple. The effect was like what happened with VHS against the in-house Betamax format of Sony. Acer’s executive implied that Android was getting a similar result and would be helpful in isolating Apple.

Shih did not have the appropriate answer with respect to the iPod’s persistent domination in the media players’ zone, although it was a closed infrastructure. Microsoft has insisted that its PlaysForSure DRM, device-independent, and media standards would be able to overtake the iPod and has indicated many manufacturers that supported it. However, Microsoft failed out and had to kill this approach in favor of the Zune platform, resembling more to the iPod. Shih also did not address problems that involved Apple’s performance with its Mac, such as the leadership during the absence of Jobs.

Stan Shih was however kind to Apple and acknowledged that its tightly integrated hardware and software model represented something valuable to build on, in spite of using the same closed system he disapproved. The truth is that Taiwanese companies, such as Acer, were insisting too much on hardware and did not pay the necessary attention to software. They needed a culture of innovation still not present in such companies.

Shih made public his belief that US PC manufacturers would eventually vanish, as they were used to live on bigger profit margins compared to the Taiwanese companies. Alternatively, they may switch over to provide services rather than continuing to produce hardware. The founder of Acer warned that companies in his country had to add value to their products in order to avoid becoming completely replaceable in the future. Better results are not likely to be seen in the future, as even Acer had to limit the demand, while Apple was the only company not slowing down its notebook orders.

Both Gartner and IDC agree that Apple has now several hundred thousand units more than Acer, its nearest competitor, as the latter has been experienced only flat sales compared to the same period of last year. Although Apple’s tablet is not included in the sales numbers for PCs, the iPad is believed to have had negatively impacted on netbook shipments.

Soaring popularity of the iPad is considered by Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, to have temporarily cannibalized sales of mini-netbooks and consumer notebook sales as well to a certain degree. According to him, it is not clear at this moment if the process will continue to affect the media tablets’ current price point.

Hewlett Packard has kept its leading position in the United States with 4.6 million PCs sold, which is 14 percent more than in the same period of last year. The second spot is held by Dell, with 4.2 million PCs. Toshiba is the last of the top five PC makers.

Hewlett Packard has consolidated its lead by rising slightly to 25.7 percent. It has sold 4.72 million PCs on the American market. Dell continued to decline and has now exactly 24 percent.

The economy has not recovered too quickly and consequently the average growth rate moved slower than it was expected and reached only 12.4 percent. This does not explain, however, the drop of Acer in market share. The company had a spectacular spring season in 2009, but new reports have shown Apple’s iPad seriously impacting on netbook sales, which was one of the core businesses for Acer. Apple also updated its MacBook as well as MacBook Pro computers, maybe some of its most important products, which have also helped the company’s growth.

Computer shipments worldwide have been up 22.4 percent. Companies like Hewlett Packard, Dell, Acer, Lenovo or Toshiba kept their positions, although a growth of 83.6 percent has been recorded for ASUS which virtually tied Toshiba on the fifth place with 4.32 million computers. Similarly to the United States, Dell and Acer have seen a small loss in their share, but Hewlett Packard also had a drop and has now 18.1 percent, which means 14.77 million PCs.

As Apple did not rank in the first five companies, IDC did not record it, but recent estimates show it on the eighth place, due to the fact that Samsung’s abrupt growth has pushed it ahead.

An important part of the continued growth has been attributed to companies replacing aging systems and also to those having more available income home, in countries that already awake of the financial crisis. There are areas on the globe with still low access to computing equipment and therefore are growing faster than do developing areas. The significant fall of Acer is probably due to its orientation towards home users. Dell would instead have benefited from focusing its efforts on business users.

A prototype of the seven-inch tablet has already been shown before the Computex event and there was no doubt that at least this smaller model would be launched this year. Acer’s tablet is anticipated to be the first serious competition to Apple’s iPad, as it seems all devices not belonging to Samsung Galaxy Tab will either come from small companies or will not arrive this year.

Currently being the world’s second largest notebook producer after Hewlett Packard, Acer is more likely perhaps to have the power to compete with Apple’s iPad. Apple already has more than three million tablets available on the market today.