Apple Will Have To Respond To Acer’s Android, Windows 7 Tablets

Acer’s new crop of Microsoft Windows 7 and Google Android tablets will add more competition to the red-hot tablet market.

Acer’s announcement that the company would begin selling a line of tablet computers as well as a large-screen smartphone is another indication that Apple is going to find itself under ever increasing pressure to deliver more and charge less.

According to Nick Kolakowski’s story in eWEEK, two of these will be Android devices similar in general design to Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets, while the largest of the three, with a screen a little more than 10 inches, will run Microsoft Windows 7.

These new Acer devices will be in stores in April.

It’s interesting that the new tablet vendors are hitting Apple and the iPad where it’s likely to hurt the worst. Samsung launched its tablet just in time for the holiday buying season, and some estimates indicate that this device will see sales of over a million by the time Black Friday comes to a close.

Considering that Samsung has chosen to sell its tablet through a variety of vendors, and considering that sales at last report were over 600,000, this number seems likely.

The key to Acer’s potential success

Acer, meanwhile, has a vast array of potential pathways to market. What will challenge Apple is that the new Acer tablets will be showing up right around the time that Apple is expected to release its new iPad version.

You could easily find basically similar tablets released through virtually every consumer electronics outlet on the planet in a variety of feature levels, Acer for the high-end, Gateway for the mid range, for example.

What’s also key to Acer’s potential success is that Android tablets will have been selling for six months by then, giving the company the ability to deliver, out the door, a clean, slick and non-clunky version of Android.

What’s not clear so far is whether the 3G wireless that’s offered through Acer’s tablets will be designed for just one network, or for a variety of networks, depending on deals with carriers.

This means, of course, that Acer tablets in a variety of forms are going to be everywhere. You can expect the features to range from very high end to something on a budget, and you can expect that the user interface will be fairly sophisticated. So come April, 2011, Apple will likely find itself faced with at least two providers of well designed, highly competitive tablets.

While the iPad will always sell just because it’s an Apple device, to sell well it will need new features, tweaks to iOS and the applications, and maybe a more competitive price.

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