Shuttle could be bought out?

It seems both Elitegroup Computer System (ECS) and Acer are in the mood for an acquisition according to Digitimes in Taiwan.

Favoured SFF maker, Shuttle, who had quite a few new developments in the pipeline when we saw representatives from the company during Computex, may be willing to sell itself.

Apparently, Shuttle could do with the cash injection, although what shape a new company would take is as yet unknown.

ECS has already acquired Tatung's display division and second-tier notebook manufacturer, Uniwill Computer, just last year. However ECS is said to stress that there is no need for them to acquire Shuttle as it doesn't fit in with their current business plan.

However, Acer has been linked in more positive ways, pointing out that it's looking for a non-US small company to acquire that isn't a notebook manufacturer. We've also seen an Acer media centre when we visited DTS at Computex so maybe Acer is looking for further expertise in that market - something that Shuttle most certainly has.

We can only hope this will turn out well for us consumers, with Acer's distribution and Shuttle's technical knowhow in the SFF arena maybe the two will form the ultimate partnership? On the other hand is Shuttle destined to lose its barebones XPC range to become purely a supplier of media centres and HD DVD/Blu-ray players for Acer?

Let us know what you think in the forums.