ARM to wrestle Acer designs from Intel and AMD?

So far, majors have been sticking to Intel and AMD for laptop designs like fly paper, but next week Acer looks to  break ranks and push out ARM solution in attempt to recover some of its old market share. Old company has tumbled from 1st to 4th in second quarter of 2011, so KitGuru must ask, will ARM PC be enough?

After removing big pieces of Italian hierarchy from the management structure, Acer CEO J. T. Wang is now expanding the company's horizons – looking for mass-market appeal to revive flagging fortunes.

ARM Devices is reporting that, at the start of August, Acer will be pushing through a brand new design which uses the alternative CPU technology.

Given the timing, you can make an educated guess that this will be focused at the huge back-to-school market.

Will the company go with Chrome, Android or a more regular distribution of Linux ? That's probably the biggest question remaining.

In terms of price, Acer would go with a more powerful Intel or AMD chip if it was possible – but it isn't – so we're also going to assume that the product will be very much ‘priced to sell'. In the US, that probably means $199 – so we could expect £149/€149 in the UK/Euro-zone.

If true, that would represent a significant drop in price from Acer's present, Intel-powered ‘Happy Meals' with Windows 7, which is £229 from Acer Direct at time of writing.

KitGuru says: If the price and spec are right, then Acer could well attack the Telcos; pushing for PC + Phone deals into an army of cost-conscious college students. Other reports indicate Samsung, Asus and Toshiba will follow suit. Channel blood-bath to follow?

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