Acer's martphone shipments have been strong in 2014 with the full-year volume expected to reach four million units, up 160% from 2013. Acer's smartphone shipments in the first half already surpassed the overall volume of 2013, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Acer will cooperate with Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) to release its eight-core 4G LTE smartphone, the Liquid X1 on August 20 in Taiwan. The smartphone features solutions from MediaTek.

The sources pointed out that Acer has adopted a strategy limiting the number of smartphone models to avoid spending too much on inventory management. Since Acer's smartphone orders for its manufacturers come in relatively small volumes, too many models would be reduce the manufacturers' willingness to to serve the vendor, the sources said.

Acer CEO Jason Chen previously noted that Acer's smartphones were only available in four markets worldwide in 2012 but the number of markets increased to 12 in 2013. By the end of 2014, Chen said the number of markets will rise to 28.

For markets such as the US and China, which are seeing fierce competition in the smartphone segment, Acer is taking a conservative approach and is focusing more on emerging markets, which the company is able to attract buyers through its brand recognition, channel relationships and services.