Acer begs Microsoft to ‘think twice’ about Surface tablet

by Steven Musil, CNET News

The CEO of the Microsoft partner, Acer, tells the Financial Times that the competition would have “a huge negative impact” for the computing ecosystem.

The tablet wars are no longer a two-horse race between Apple and Google.

Four days after Microsoft invited the press to Los Angeles (and after four days of Web-wide speculation as to why), on Monday, June 19, 2012, the company finally unveiled Surface.

Surface is a line of tablet devices running the company’s next-generation Windows operating system and marks Microsoft’s first foray into the ever-expanding tablet market. Yes, you read that correctly: Microsoft will be building and branding its own tablets, effectively competing with its own hardware partners such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo.

While the Surface is Microsoft’s attempt to compete with the iPad and the slew of Android tablets on the market, the tablet will also be competing with similar devices from Microsoft’s own partners, which were not informed about the Surface until just before its announcement in June.

That new competition led Acer CEO JT Wang to tell the Financial Times that Microsoft’s plans to launch its own tablet in October would be a “negative for the worldwide ecosystem” in computing and beg the software giant to rethink the move.

“We have said think it over. Think twice,” Wang is quoted as saying. “It will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at so please think twice.”  …………….. More about this brouhaha

DCL: For those who want to know more about Microsoft’s plans and the future of the Universe, they are discussed here.