(Source: TrustedReviews)

The Acer CU-6530 digital camera reviewed last month by TrustedReviews, and the Acer Aspire E-Series desktops, have each received the internationally renowned Red Dot Design Award for 2006. These awards are presented by Germany’s Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen (DZNW) for outstanding design quality and innovative designs during the annual Red Dot Design Award international competition.

Both the CU-6530 and Aspire E-Series desktops were judged within the Media and Home Electronics category, where judging criteria included the “…product’s degree of innovation, functionality, ergonomic value, durability and ecological soundness.”

These awards follow the 2006 iF Design Awards received by the Acer TravelMate 8200 and 5-Series LCD Monitors earlier this year.

(Source: Acer)

In early February, Acer unveiled the Acer Aspire E500 in India - another step towards capturing India’s mainstream desktop market. The Aspire E500 is equipped with a 3.06GHz Pentium 4 processor, 256MB DDR2 RAM, and a 80 GB SATA HDD, but lacks a dedicated graphics card (on-board ATI RADEON® XPRESS 200).

This is clearly a sharp modification from Aspire E500-series desktops launched elsewhere in Asia, and thus, clearly reflects Acer’s target range in India’s rapidly growing PC market. Even Thailand’s model comes with a standard 1GB DDR2 RAM, a 250GB HDD and a 256MB PCI-Express ATI X600 Pro.

However, the Aspire E500’s “All-In-One Entertainment” function has not changed as India’s model still comes preinstalled with Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition, and equipped with a dual input TV tuner card with an Infrared (IR) remote and IR receiver.

[News via EFYTimes]

Another step in the right direction for Acer as it goes for a joint venture with Advanced Electronics Company (AEC) on a desktop production facility in Saudi Arabia. This follows Hewlett-Packard’s success with its Saudi Arabia PC plant, which allowed it access to government contracts and home initiatives.

Without doubt, we can see that Acer hopes Saudi Arabia will turn out as positive a customer as India - as recent notebook sales numbers have shown. With the price points Acer sell at, I feel it should be competitive against the already entrenched Hewlett-Packard.

[News via ITP.net]

It seems that Acer is delving further into the Indian PC market with this introduction of the AcerPower Entra home PC. With an AMD x86 1600 CPU, 128MB DDR SDRAM, 40GB HDD, and a 15″ CRT monitor, the AcerPower Entra is definitely a budget PC aimed at the up and coming Indian middle class.

But for a clearer understanding of Acer’s goal for the Entra, read the following excerpt and the source article:

“Through our research we have seen that most low-cost offerings do not have certain features required for efficient home computing. Acer India has taken the initiative to create the Acer Power Entra designed specifically for the Indian consumer’s requirements. As part of our ‘Empower India’ initiative this Republic Day, we have once again broken barriers to reach a price point we are sure will appeal to consumers across segments. We expect much enthusiasm from the home consumer in B&C cities, where we will be focusing most of our marketing efforts,” said Sam Thomas, Assistant GM, Networking and PC Client group.

[News and picture via IT News Online]

Digitimes reports that Viiv-based desktop PCs will be entering mass production in early February. They state that, “Taiwan-based small-form-factor (SFF) PC specialists AOpen and Shuttle and own-brand PC companies Acer, Gigabyte Technology, and Micro-Star International (MSI) are gearing up to introduce new desktop PCs based on the Intel Viiv platform in January 2006.”

Read more at Digitimes.

Now, I’m not too sure whether or not I favour the Viiv concept. Bringing Intel into consumer entertainment reeks of Xbox-like vibes. But, I’ve a feeling that I’m sure to be wrong about this.