Samantha Rose Hunt19 March 2009, 11:30 PM
With the smartphone market booming, Acer is going for a piece of the pie, but much to Microsoft's chagrin, they are not doing it with Windows Mobile.
Like most smalltime phone makers, Acer has generally made Windows
Mobile phones in the past -- including a line of smartphones called
"Tempo" which it announced last month.
However, the company now intends to launch a new smart phone during the second half of 2009, with company representatives claiming that it will be the company’s first non-Windows phone.
With its acquisition of the Taiwanese handset manufacturer E-Ten Information Systems, Acer launched its way into the smartphone market. Last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company told journalists it would be abandoning Microsoft's flagging Windows Mobile operating system for this handset.
During the event Acer alluded to its intention to use 'other' operating systems for its smartphones in the future, including Google’s Android, but the company gave very few further details.
Representatives of the company, which is based in Taipei, claim that the first smartphone without a Windows OS will hit the shelves later in the year, though which operating system the phone will use has not been announced.
The rumor mill is churning, but the company of course has declined comment on speculation that it will be bringing a Google Android phone to market -- though that seems to be a fairly safe bet.