Acer Promises Free Smartphones (With Contract)

Plenty of manufacturers have been talking about flashy, new, powerful phones at Mobile World Congress. Some have been talking about basic phones for the developing world. But Acer's the only one who has promised inexpensive smartphones for the U.S.

Acer has already been selling the company's Aspire One netbook at Radio Shack with a two-year AT&T contract for $99, plus $60 a month, which is music to AT&T's ears. With operator subsidies on board and Acer's economies of scale, Acer's Smartphone Unit President Aymar de Lencquesaing said he'll be able to push Windows phone prices down to free with contract.
"We'll make it a very simple, easy interface ... and these will retail at zero dollars," he said.

It's notoriously difficult for new cell-phone makers to get the ear of U.S. carriers, who control almost all of the U.S. phone market. But Acer's Aymar de Lencquesaing said his firm has something that wireless carriers already want: netbooks.

"We can offer them a mobile data device of any form factor, of any size, to fill their needs," he said.

Acer's phones will probably appear on either AT&T or T-Mobile, de Lencquesaing said, as they will use the GSM radio standard. Acer's large size, firm financial backing, and highly desirable netbook and 3G notebook lineup have given the company an 'in' with U.S. mobile operators, he said.

"None of the operators we've had difficulties getting appointments with, and getting to the stage where we've had conversations about selecting devices from our lineup," he said.

We'll probably have to wait to see Acer's U.S. lineup, though. Acer's smartphone push comes from the company's purchase of E-Ten, an Asian manufacturer, and the first four Windows Mobile devices the company announced for the first half of 2009 smack of stuff that E-Ten already had in the pipeline. E-Ten devices never made it to U.S. retailers, and we doubt these devices will either.

But Acer's second-half lineup, which will consist of at least four more phones, includes Acer-developed Windows Mobile 6.5 phones for both the high and low ends. The comapany's $500 H2 model, for instance, uses Qualcomm's state-of-the-art 1-GHz Snapdragon chipset and has a 3.8-inch, 800-by-480 touch screen; on the other hand, Acer also has the free-with-contract smartphones. The L1 looks like a sliding feature-phone but runs Windows Mobile; think of something like the T-Mobile Shadow, but with a touch screen. The C1 is an all-touch-screen, slab-style budget Windows phone.

All of Acer's Windows phones have a cuddly, widget-based overlay on top of Windows Mobile which looks like a picture of a sort of virtual office. You click on items in the office to launch applications or perform tasks; clicking on a desk calendar, for instance, takes you to the calendar.

The company is also reported to be developing at least two Google Android-powered phones; although de Lencquesaing demurred on specifics of those.

U.S. consumers should expect to be able to buy Acer smartphones in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2010, de Lencquesaing said.