Acer launching touchscreen netbook in 2009

Acer will be launching its third-generation of netbook by the end of the year and reports suggest that it will feature a touchscreen. We don’t have any further details than that, but the news is hardly surprising. A fourth generation netbook will release in 2010.

We already know that a number of touchscreen manufacturers are gearing up for an increase in capacitive (multi-touch) panels in the second half of the year. Additionally, a number of netbook vendors have already hinted that they will be looking to release touchscreen models to coincide with the launch of Windows 7 (which touts a number of touch-screen features).

It will be interesting to see whether Acer go for a convertible tablet (net tablet) form factor as seen in the Asus T91 or Gigabyte T1028 or just release a normal netbook with touchscreen. My guess would be that any planned touchscreen model from Acer would feature a multi-touch screen in a net tablet design.

In other news, Acer expects that shipments of netbooks and notebooks to increase by 35% to 40% from a year earlier. J.T. Wang, chairman of Acer, expects that netbooks will become more and more popular and will take over 50% of the PC market in the next two years. Currently, netbook sales account for 30% of the company’s notebook sales. Acer is aiming to ship 26 million notebooks and 10 million netbooks in 2009.