Posted on Tuesday, April 30 2013 @ 17:08 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
DigiTimes
picked up word that Acer plans to release a $399 11.6" touchscreen notebook in mid-May. Acer originally anticipated that $599 would be the sweet spot for touchscreen notebooks, but the firm is now pushing prices further down as the previous price point did not attract demand as expected.
Acer plans to release an 11.6-inch touchscreen notebook in mid-May, priced at only US$399 and since such a price point has already hit brand vendors' bottom line, there is unlikely to be any other touchscreen notebooks with an even lower price to appear in the short term, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
The touchscreen notebook and its touch panel glass, are both manufactured by Wistron. Compared to Corning's Gorilla, Wistron's solution using soda lime as material, is about 10% cheaper, but it is inferior in terms of both quality and rigidness; however, the solution still receives broad adoption in notebook products, the sources said.
The sources pointed out that the Gorilla has been adopted mostly by mobile devices without a cover such as tablets or smartphones, and touchscreen notebooks thank to their covers, are able to adopt lower-tier solutions to save costs.
