Acer could announce 8-inch Windows 8 tablet as early as next week

Citing unnamed news sources and local analysts, China Post reports that Acer is planning to hold a launch party for the 8 inch tablet in New York on May 3, an event which it says will also see CEO Wang Jeng-tang and corporate president Jim Wong introduce Intel’s Haswell chipset (the successor to the Ivy Bridge CPU) and other new Acer products.

The source adds that the Iconia W3 is likely to appear at the Computex exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan this June while Singapore-based tech website, The Tech Revolutionist, claims that the model could hit retail stores in September.

Purported photos and specs leaked on the Iconia W3 earlier this week, with French-language website Minimachines reporting that the Windows 8 tablet has a 1.8GHz dual-core 7 inch tablet 2GB of RAM and front and rear cameras.sdRd4E34

Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi admits that she was unaware of an upcoming launch for Acer's latest tablet addition, but says that a forthcoming announcement would make sense -- so long as the model is priced to compete with Android.

“It seems to make sense given the new support for smaller form factors that Windows Blue will allow," said Milanesi. "From a price point [of view], anything over $399 would not work. Ideally, they should match the $199 Android [starting] price but that would be hard, so $299 to $349 is where I think they should come in.”

Acer refused to comment on the speculation and emailed TabTimes to say that it “doesn’t comment on unannounced products”.

Adding further to the intrigue and China Post, which q88 tablet is a reputable source for news (if not necessarily tablet rumors) in the country, says that Acer and Asus are among the manufacturers preparing to release new low-end Android tablets later in 2013.