Acer is leveraging its wild success in the netbook market in order to woo American wireless carriers, accord to PCMag. Acer already sells its Aspire One in Radio Shack outlets for only $99 with a 2-year $60/month AT&T contract. By providing cash-crunched carriers with revenue opportunities, Acer has found an ‘in’ for its smartphones and with subsidies could sell handsets for nothing by the end of the year.
What Acer will offer in the United States is unknown, but it seems that its E-Ten-influenced line unveiled at the Mobile World Congress won’t make it here. On the other hand, its prototype line also at MWC could. Its H2 model runs on Qualcomm’s speedy 1 GHz Snapdragon chip and has an 800 x 480, 3.8-inch display; the L1 is a touchscreen phone with a slider form factor; the C1 is another touchscreen, slab-style phone. All of the handsets are expected to sport the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system.
Acer added that AT&T and T-Mobile will be the likely carriers due to the handsets’ GSM radio. Unfortunately the company didn’t elaborate on its expected pair of Android handsets.
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