Acer to favor Android over Windows Phone 8 in its 2013 smartphone push

Acer plans to launch six Android smartphones in 2013, and one running Windows Phone 8, but not until the second half of the year.

Acer has been selling smartphones for a while, however it has never made much of a splash in the market, especially compared to HTC, its fellow Taiwanese mobile manufacturer.

It’s hoping to change this in 2013 though, and a report by Digitimes says the company has at least seven new mobile devices on the release schedule for the coming year.

These will be split into six Android smartphones and one running Windows Phone 8. The continued backing of Android isn’t a surprise, but what about the appearance of a single Windows Phone 8 phone?

Acer wasn’t one of the four hardware partners named at Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 announcement back in June, but it was one of those who joined up with Microsoft for Windows Phone 7.

Before now, the company admitted it was put off Windows Phone due to its hardware and software limitations, and although devices were rumored, none appeared. Finally, a solitary Acer Windows Phone 7 device was launched with 7.5 Mango — the Allegro, or W4 — in late 2011, but it didn’t set pulses racing.

Therefore, the admission it’ll be concentrating on Android for 2013, with the exception of one possible Windows Phone, sounds like business as usual.

Acer’s ongoing spat with Microsoft

The news comes soon after Acer’s CEO very publicly voiced his displeasure over Microsoft’s decision to produce its own Windows 8 tablets. “Think twice” JT Wang told the company, warning them that the Surface tablets would “create a huge negative impact” on the industry.

Wang’s sentiments weren’t shared by Chen Guowei, Acer’s global smartphone group manager, when he spoke to the press in July. He’s quoted as saying that with the release of Windows Phone 8, “the time is ripe for investment in the platform,” but as its first smartphone to use the OS won’t be out until the second half of 2013; it’s obviously not that ripe.

With nearly a year to go before then, it doesn’t sound like Acer is straying too far away from what it knows. Plus, by this time next year, we’d have expected Windows Phone 8 to have either had, or be expecting, its first major software update too.

Windows Phone 8’s official release can’t be that far away, and with just one Windows Phone 8 handset from Samsung announced, and now one promised from Acer in 12 months time; Microsoft had best hope Nokia and HTC has something special to reveal this month, as the initial hardware line-up appears to need a boost — and soon.