Acer Slashes 2011 Tablet Shipments By 60 Percent

Acer's original optimism for its tablet sales this year are now facing the realities of tough competition. The company has just revised its forecasts for this year's tablet and notebook shipments, cutting down estimates by as much as 60 percent. Who's to blame? Apple's iPad 2 and the slow recovery of the European economy.

Acer, the world's number two PC maker, is facing a surplus in inventory that it needs to clear out. The company has missed its forecasts for the last three quarters and had an internal clash over how to deal with the tablet market that saw the departure of chief exec Gianfranco Lanci back in March.

However, Chairman J.T. Wang believes that the third quarter will see sales become more stable. He also announced that the new target for tablet shipments this year is now revised to 2.5 to 3 million units. This is quite a big drop from the original 5 to 7 million units target set early this year. Notebook shipments are also expected to drop.

Despite this news, Acer still has a good number of tablets in the pipeline. We've already reviewed their Acer Iconia Tab A500, its little brother, the 7-inch A100 is on its way, and an Iconia M500 set to be a Meego tablet running on the Intel Atom is in the works.

[via Reuters]