Acer chief asks Microsoft to “think twice” about launching Surface: FT

Acer has attacked Microsoft’s plans to enter into the hardware space yet again and said the Surface tablet would be bad for the ecosystem comprising itself and other PC makers like HP and Lenovo, among others. “We have said [to Microsoft] think it over,” JT Wang, Acer’s chairman and chief executive told the Financial Times. “Think twice. 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.”
This is not the first time Acer is making its displeasure known around Microsoft’s Surface. “Instead of enhancing the user experience for Win 8 (…) they open a new battlefield. I worry that this will lead into a defocus internally for Microsoft, and then we have to suffer because we are working with their products,” Oliver Ahrens, Acer’s senior VP and president for Europe, Middle East and Africa was quoted by Reuters after the Surface announcement.
Microsoft took the industry by surprise when it announced the Surface tablet in June. Apparently, the super secret project was so secret that Microsoft did not even tell its PC hardware partners about its plans to launch a competing device till a couple of days before the announcement. Even then, details were kept to bare minimum and most vendors found out about the Surface by following media reports.