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Acer Hints at Smart Phone Launch

Company to offer 3 devices with Bluetooth and GPS capabilities.

Rosemary Haworth, PC Advisor

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Acer said that it has plans to enter the smart phone or 3G market. Announcing its business and consumer lineup for the coming months this week, the company hinted that it may be ready to launch a smart phone handset as early as the first half of next year.

The company is set to launch three new PDAs primed with both Bluetooth and GPS satellite navigation software. It was not yet decided on whether these would use the Destinator software used on its existing GPS-enabled PDAs or the popular Navman system.

However, U.K. product manager for notebooks and PDAs, James Harvey confirmed that the new PDAs, set for launch in January, represent "a first approach to the smart phone market".

Another Acer product manager, Federico Carozzi, said that it was likely the smart phones would resemble a Blackberry or Treo in design, but with more PDA functionality.

New Notebook Plans

Along with several new TravelMate business notebooks are a clutch of new Aspire laptops aimed at the consumer market. All the Aspires will sport wide-screen displays and come with Acer's Aspire Arcade software, a digital entertainment interface that operates much like Microsoft's much-vaunted Media Center 2005 Edition machines. Harvey said that the company expects to offer notebook entertainment machines with internal and, possibly, external TV tuner options.

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