A picture of the E-Ten exhibit at Computex 2007 in Taipei can be seen somewhere. On an illuminated display stand, a group of Glofi-like phones with HSDPA connectivity, built-in GPS, a touchscreen, and Windows Mobile running underneath appeared remarkably capable for their time. Standing close by, engineers were pleased with what they had created. A corporation that had spent twenty-two years systematically working its way up from a Chinese-language input system for MS-DOS to something that appeared to be genuinely competitive with the worldwide market at the time. Acer made their offer eight months later. Before the following Computex, the brand was essentially dead.
In 1985, as Taiwanese technology businesses were starting to realize that hardware production could be more than a subcontract arrangement, E-Ten was founded. Chinese-speaking computer users required a mechanism to input their own language into MS-DOS computers, which were built solely around the Latin alphabet, the inventors realized. Almost no one else in the early PC business had a thorough understanding of character encoding and rendering, which was necessary to build that input system—functional, useable, and quick enough to be practical. It was unglamorous software that was necessary for end users who needed it but invisible to those who didn’t. E-Ten created it and became well-known for it.
The business used that foundation as a stepping stone to related products, just as Taiwanese IT companies learnt to use technical competence at the time. Laser printers came next, followed by publishing tools and software utilities. As the PC market developed and Windows supplanted DOS by the mid-1990s, E-Ten was considering the future. In 1997, the solution was handheld organizers, or PDAs as they were known at the time, which carried your contacts and calendar without requiring a desk. Although that market quickly became congested, E-Ten had the engineering know-how to keep up with it and the export connections with European distributors to sell in markets outside of Taiwan and the surrounding area.
When the Glofiish line was introduced in 2006, it was E-Ten’s biggest gamble. These were Windows Mobile handsets, which had features that the enthusiast market in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK carefully followed on forums with names like XDA-Developers. They could make calls, access mobile internet, run third-party programs, and more. Released in late 2006, the Glofiish X500 integrated GPS and HSDPA into a compact factor that won an award at Computex 2007. It received significant attention from enthusiastic reviews throughout Europe. It was stocked by the specialty mobile reseller Expansys. Glofiish devices were purchased by a group of consumers in London, Amsterdam, and Sydney because to their competitive specifications and lower cost compared to the HTC equivalent.
Scale was something E-Ten was unable to purchase. HTC controlled the Windows Mobile market in 2006 and 2007 because it possessed the production volume, marketing money, and carrier connections to undercut any company the size of E-Ten. In the UK, O2-branded HTC devices were starting to show up in high-street outlets. Symbian devices from Nokia were ubiquitous. Revenue and brand recognition outside of the enthusiast group were constrained by E-Ten’s distribution, which remained mostly online and specialized. As the company’s volume decreased, the R&D expenses associated with staying up to date—new chipsets, new wireless standards, and new software iterations—did not decrease proportionately.
Early in 2008, Acer took action, paying about NT$3.35 billion for the entire business, or about $100 million at the time of exchange. The strategic reasoning was simple: Acer’s laptop business was expanding quickly, mobile internet was obviously the next front in the conflict, and it would take years to develop a smartphone capability from scratch. By purchasing E-Ten, they gained access to a portfolio of intellectual property, an engineering staff skilled in creating mobile devices, and pre-existing manufacturing ties. It was quicker. In the long term, it was probably less expensive than building internally.
Seven months prior to the transaction closing, the iPhone was released. Android was not yet available for purchase. After assimilating E-Ten’s personnel and technology, Acer finally introduced its own Android smartphones under the Acer name, navigating a market that would not resemble the one E-Ten had been competing in in just two years. The Glofiish name vanished completely. Along with it, the E-Ten name vanished.
