Having lifted the lid on its tablet plans back in April, Taiwanese tech giant Acer has had to admit things have not gone to plan, scaling back its full year shipments as a result.

According to Reuters, Acer has now reduced its 2011 tablet targets by almost 60 percent, with the firm looking to clear accumulated stock on the shop shelves.

Tablet trials

"The third quarter will be considerably more stable," chairman J.T. Wang said of the current difficulties at a shareholder meeting.

"The fourth quarter will be even better," he added, going on to inform reporters that the revised target for tablet shipments in 2011 is 2.5–3 million units, down from the 5-7 million units previously forecast.

As a result, the company expects to sell 800,000 tablets in both the second and third quarters, with the second quarter actually exceeding forecasts, less than 10 percent down from Q1.

The firm's headline tablet - the Iconia Tab A500 - launched back in April, equipped with Android Honeycomb, 7-inch display, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage.

[source: Reuters]