Taiwan-based notebook brand Acer has recently notified its upstream partners that the company is gradually reducing its Aspire One netbook orders and will turn to increase its Iconica tablet PC orders as well as strengthening related marketing starting in April 2011, according to sources from upstream component suppliers.
Sources from touchscreen makers pointed out that Acer has set a strong tablet PC shipments target for April and ordered 400,000-500,000 units of 10.1-inch touch screens for the month. Despite that Apple has already booked up almost all available touchscreen capacity, some Taiwan-based first-tier touchscreen makers including TPL Holding, are still willing to provide capacity to Acer, helping Acer to still be able to achieve 60-70% of its shipment forecast, the sources said.
Although Acer, at its recent investors conference, pointed out that the company expects its PC shipments to drop 10% sequentially in the second quarter, sources from the upstream supply chain noted that the company only made some adjustments to its netbook orders for the second quarter with the forecast for traditional notebooks, and tablet PCs still the same, therefore Acer's upstream partners are still optimistic about Acer's second-quarter performance.
