In response to a surprise second quarter loss of NT$343 million (US$11.4 million), Acer CEO JT Wang said in a conference call with investors on Thursday that the company is going to increase its range of Android and Chrome OS products, while offering fewer Windows-powered products.

The loss was caused by a combination of higher costs and lower sales and compares with a NT$56 million profit in the same quarter last year. Last year, Acer said that it would attempt to produce fewer, better PC products to move upmarket. This has caused higher design and marketing costs, but apparently hasn't been sufficient to offset the broader slowdown in the PC market.

As a result, Wang said that Acer is "trying to grow our non-Windows business as soon as possible." While Acer once flirted with non-Google alternative operating systems, pressure from Mountain View has forced the Taiwan company to stick with its operating systems, both Android and Chrome OS. Wang argues that both of these will have a role, noting that "Android is very popular in smartphones and dominant in tablets" and that he sees a "new market" for Chromebooks.

Currently, around 3 percent of the machines Acer sells are Chromebooks running Google's Chrome OS. Wang said that machines running both of Google's operating systems will contribute about 10 to 12 percent of Acer's revenue by the end of the year, and as much as 30 percent next year.

Wang argued that "the Windows camp has to do something to re-establish or reinforce confidence among PC users. People are reluctant [to buy] and are holding [off] their purchasing decisions."

Though the success of Android is inarguable, the ability to profit from it is much harder to come by. In the smartphone market, Samsung is dominant, with other players struggling to win sales or eke out a profit. HTC, for example, scored a critical hit with the One but has faced falling revenue (down 22 percent year on year to NT$70 billion/US$2.35 billion for the second quarter) and slumping profit (down 83 percent to NT$1.25 billion). The company has warned that next quarter, it will make a loss.

The tablet market is arguably less mature and more open to new entrants; nonetheless, success could prove hard to come by. Critical consensus is that the best tablets available are the ones sold at essentially no profit: Amazon's Kindle Fires, and the Google-branded Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 (built, respectively, by Asus and Samsung). How this critical consensus translates into sales isn't immediately clear; Samsung and Asus are the number two and number three tablet builders (behind Apple), with some split between their own brands and Google's.

One thing is clear: companies are working hard to suck the profit out of the tablet market. This took decades in the PC market, and it looks like it will take a matter of years for tablets. Even Apple, a company notoriously defensive of its margins, has had to accept lower profitability with the iPad mini. Tablets may be where the sales growth is, but for a company seeking a return to profitability, the tablet market is a challenging place to venture.

As for the Chromebooks, it's hard to see why they would show any particular growth. Android has grown to dominate the smartphone and tablet markets, but Chrome OS has, thus far, had much less impact in the PC market—not least because Android tablets cost about the same, and do so much more. Unless Google does something to radically change the nature of Chrome OS (or Android), the relative lack of success of Chrome OS is likely to continue.

Even with the greater emphasis on Android and Chrome OS, Acer expects that the lion's share of its revenue will continue to come from Windows machines. As a member of the "Windows camp," the company must surely shoulder at least some of the blame for the lack of confidence within the market. The company's PC efforts are decidedly mixed. Machines such as the Aspire S7 are a (flawed) step in the right direction toward the high-end, but weird devices such as the Aspire R7, not to mention outright horrible gadgets like the Iconia W3, undermine the company's high-end claims.

Acer isn't alone in facing the difficult consequences of a declining PC market. But unfortunately for the industry, there's no easy replacement for the Windows PC that offers both high sales and healthy margins. Pushing Android and Chrome OS is certainly different from pushing Windows—but there's no guarantee that it's going to be any more successful.