Acer News: Iconia Tab Pricing Beats iPad; Notebooks Made in Western China

It’s a tough Q2 for Acer, facing supply-side constraints at a time when it’s busy launching a lot of new products, such as its Android-powered Iconia Tab A500, or its Windows-rockin’ Tablet PCs.

But at least Acer has hit their target of besting Apple’s iPad on price – the A500 starts at US$449 in the United States, in contrast to the similarly spec’d iPad’s $499 – and thereby becoming the only major-name vendor to not induce ‘sticker shock’ amongst consumers. Tablet buyers seem reluctant to buy anything that’s pricier than a comparative iPad, and even feature-packed tablets, such as the 3D-packin’, HD-shootin’ LG G-Slate, have had a very hard time justifying prices that are north of US$700.

Priced Too Low?

With tight profit margins in most of Acer’s market sectors (ie: netbooks, budget notebooks), the company was compelled yesterday to reassure investors that it wasn’t shooting itself in the foot with its sub-$500 US sticker price, and that its numbers make its tablets still profitable to both its suppliers and its distributors.

According to Taiwanese site Digitimes, industry observers say Acer is still on course to ship 300,000 tablets in March.

Go West, Young Notebook

As for Acer’s notebooks, the company is following the lead of fellow Taiwanese manufacturers, Foxconn – which is in nearby Chengdu, where a deadly plant blast last week killed three workers – in moving towards mainland China’s cheaper inland/western regions, away from the wage- and land-price hotspots of Shenzhen in the south.

Starting May 26th, last Thursday, Acer is now shipping notebooks from out of Chongqing. The new base will, by the end of the year, be making 30 to 40% of Acer’s notebooks.