Taiwan’s Acer plans to narrow its range of smartphones next year and focus on improving profit margins instead of pushing to expand shipments.

ST Liew, president of Acer’s smartphone business, told DigiTimes that it is still targeting 10 million smartphone shipments next year but is exploring ways to expand earnings.

He said the company will reduce the number of new models launched next year to five instead of the planned seven or eight.

Acer will also slow plans to move into India and Brazil since the markets have been flooded with handsets from rivals in China, such as Xiaomi, Huawei, Lenovo, Meizu and Coolpad, DigiTimes reported.

Smartphone shipments from Taiwan-based handset brands and ODMs fell by more than 10 per cent in Q3 from the previous quarter to 19.54 million units.

Both Acer and HTC saw shipments decline in the quarter compared to Q2, with only Asus experiencing an increase, according to estimates by DigiTimes Research.