IT vendor Acer is seeking a manufacturing partner for OEM production of smartphones in Indonesia to avoid the country's high customs duty on imported smartphones and will make a final decision in the second half of 2015, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers.

Acer's motivation is to tap the Indonesia smartphone market, as Indonesia has the largest population and the highest proportion of handset users for mobile shopping among Southeast Asian countries, the sources said. In addition, handset users as a percentage of population in Indonesia is expected to rise from 28% in 2014 to 43% in 2015, the sources indicated.

Acer aims to ship six million smartphones in 2015 but only shipped 1.8 million units during the first half and therefore is under pressure of increasing shipments in the second half, the sources noted.

As Intel has set stricter conditions for subsidizing vendors' procurement of smartphone application processors (APs), Acer has evaluated the feasibility and decided not to adopt Intel AP solutions, the sources said. Instead, Acer has adopted AP solutions developed by Taiwan-based MediaTek, the sources indicated.