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Acer CEO resigns as company posts record loss
Just 24 hours after one tech heavyweight lost its CEO, another has been forced to bow out of the game. After his company posted a huge loss and wrote off a chunk of value from sub-brands Gateway and Packard Bell, Acer CEO and Chairman JT Wang has decided to resign. In an email statement, the executive expresses regret that he couldn't lead the firm back to prosperity and takes responsibility for the recent spate of huge losses. In the wake of the news, current president Jim Wong will assume the role of CEO on January 1st, while company founder Stan Shih will head up a transition committee as JT Wang serves the remainder of his tenure as chairman -- which is due to end in June of next year.
Acer turns down non-tablet ARM devices, player hates the smartbook game
Acer may be going on a full touchscreen blitz at Computex, but one thing it's not doing is chasing others down the smartbook path. Talking with journos as Taipei's big gala got underway, company chairman JT Wang said that ARM was too fresh-faced to be used in anything besides a tablet, at least until 64-bit ARM architecture speeds things up in earnest. Wang wasn't too worried, though: Intel and Microsoft were recovering their "relationship" now that Windows 8 was providing a spark to reignite the love affair. That will leave Acer taking a decidedly different route than its Taiwan sibling ASUS, whose Tablet 600 carries more than a slight smartbook vibe. With ARM-based Windows 8 PCs not poised to arrive in force until early 2013, though, it will take some time before we know which course is wisest.
Acer will stop making cheap crap, but keep selling netbooks. Discuss.
Here's a bit of a head-scratcher: Acer has said it will stand by its man, which in this case is the netbook, but CEO J.T. Wang also recently told Dow Jones that his company will stop making "cheap and unprofitable products." So, which is it? Will the manufacturer keep churning out the low cost (and even lower specced) machines that it managed to sell 1.7 million of last quarter? Or will it stop "[blindly] pursuing market share" with affordable, but poorly made crap? Wang specifically said that Ultrabooks would become the company's "key growth driver next year" and hopefully return Acer to profitability. If that fails, we're sure there's plenty of room for some of its pastel wares over at the Home Shopping Network.
Acer Aspire 3951 photos leaked, new Ultrabooks to launch in September
We don't mind eyeballing a few impossibly clean renders when we get wind of a new toy, but there's nothing like the real McCoy. Today's bones slipped out of a (now pulled) HDblog hands-on of the Acer Aspire 3951 Ultrabook, possibly leaked ahead of an IFA 2011 embargo. The genuine article looks nearly identical to its rendered counterpart, albeit a bit thicker and more plasticky. The unveiled 13.3-inch MacBook Air competitor reportedly sports a second generation Intel Core processor, boots from sleep in under two seconds, and is only 13mm thick. The price? While there is no official word on this exact model, Acer head-honcho JT Wang mentioned last week that the outfit was prepping to launch a new Ultrabook in September for about $800. Lines up nicely with the Acer 3951's rumored $770-960 price range, doesn't it?
Acer chairman: iPad "fever" will recede
One thing you can say about the founder and chairman of Taiwan-based PC maker Acer -- they're optimists. A few weeks ago, TUAW ran a story about Acer founder Stan Shih, who was quoted as saying that iPads were a "fad." Now Acer chairman J.T. Wang is on the record in a Reuter's post as saying that "tablet PC fever is receding," and notebooks will regain consumer interest. Wang's comments were made in the face of a T$6.79 billion (US$234.3 million) loss in the second quarter ending June 30. That loss was more than double what analysts expected, and is typical of what most PC makers are seeing with the iPad and other mobile devices eating into sales of netbooks and other low-margin laptops. Acer does stand to benefit from the departure of HP from the PC business. Acer is the number two supplier of consumer PCs in the European market, and between the cold fact of HPs absence and the wishful thinking of Wang that tablets will just go away, the company might be able to make a profit again in the future.
Acer lowers forecast for tablet, notebook shipments, blames limping European economy
Acer had high hopes for 2011, but it looks like its expectations may have been a bit too optimistic. Today, the company issued revised forecasts for shipments of its tablet PCs, predicting to move between 2.5 and three million units by year's end -- down from the five to seven million it projected earlier. Acer chairman J.T. Wang expects current quarter notebook shipments to dip by ten percent from their Q1 levels, before stabilizing or slightly increasing during Q3. According to the new-look firm, these downward revisions are largely due to lagging economic growth in Europe, though its Asian and US markets "remain healthy." European inventories are expected to decrease to normal levels by the end of this month, which should allow the company's market share to rebound during the second half of this year. It's certainly not a dire outlook, but it's probably not the start new Corporate President Jim Wong was looking to get off to, either.
Microsoft incentivizing chipmakers and tablet manufacturers to form 'sole alliances'? (updated)
A trio of sources speaking to Bloomberg have seemingly shed light on Acer's concerns with Microsoft's new tablet strategy. Seems that the boys beneath Ballmer hope to speed delivery of the company's new tablet OS by limiting variations. To accomplish this, Microsoft is offering incentives to chip and computer makers that agree to form sole alliances (i.e., one chipmaker works exclusively with one computer manufacturer) including enhanced feature sets and lower prices on Microsoft software. Under the plan, chip suppliers will be able to select a second company to produce a clamshell-style laptop using Microsoft's next wares. The plan is not mandatory and does not apply to desktop use of Microsoft next operating system, according to Bloomberg's sources. However, if true, then it represents a dramatic departure from Microsoft's traditional war-of-attrition approach to the laptop and tablet market that has resulted in a near limitless choice of brands and configurations so synonymous with Wintel. It all sounds incredible until you consider Microsoft's approach to Windows Phone that already marries its mobile OS to a highly restrictive specification sheet. With Windows Next (or Windows 8, if you prefer) set to support both Intel architectures and ARM (and all its licensees), we can understand Microsoft's desire for tighter control over its partners in hopes of accelerating development and testing. After all, Microsoft is conspicuously absent from the tablet discussion these days. We guess Steve wasn't kidding when he called this OS Microsoft's "riskiest product bet" yet. Update: And now DigiTimes has jumped in with support for Acer CEO, J.T. Wang, claiming that Taiwan's PC makers have been excluded from Microsoft's Integrated Development Program (IDP) for Windows 8 tablet PCs. According to the Taiwanese rumor rag, long time Microsoft partners Acer, ASUS, and even HTC have been shut out of the proceedings. Instead, DigiTimes claims that chipmakers Intel, AMD, TI, Qualcomm and NVIDIA have been invited by Microsoft to choose manufacturers from a first-round list of participants limited to Dell, HP, and Samsung. Hopefully Microsoft will add some clarity to all this later today when we get our first look at its next generation OS. [Thanks, Pradeep]
New Acer will be more like Apple, less like HP
The details behind the rift that saw Acer's CEO Gianfranco Lanci (pictured) suddenly resign yesterday are now starting to emerge. Simply put, Acer's board wants the Taiwanese company to be more like Apple and HTC, according to Bloomberg, raking in big profits on fat margins. Lanci's approach, however, was to aggressively increase volumes and use its scale to negotiate cheaper prices from suppliers in a race to steal market share from Dell and HP. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Acer's profit margin in the last fiscal year was just 2.3 percent compared to Apple's 21.5 percent. Daunting, to say the least. With Lanci gone, JT Wang, Acer's chairman and temporary CEO, plans to put more effort into expanding its smartphone and tablet business while broadening efforts around enterprise sales. For Wang, Lanci's departure marks a break with the past, saying, "Recently the iPad [tablet computer] and other new form factors have had a very big impact on the PC market. We have to change our business strategy." While PCs will still be core to the business, Wang said "we won't be in a hurry to change to become the world number one." Unfortunately for Acer, its brand is more closely associated with low-cost laptops than with the premium devices required to significantly expand its profit margins. We'd wish 'em luck but we think Acer will be better served by an innovative CEO and focused R&D.
Acer CEO and President Gianfranco Lanci resigns amid disagreement about company's future direction
Acer's board and CEO don't seem to have been getting along too brilliantly lately and now the situation's come to a point with the resignation of one Mr. Gianfranco Lanci from the company's helm. In a press release just distributed, Acer points out that Lanci held different views from the majority of board members about the "importance on scale, growth, customer value creation, brand position enhancement, and on resource allocation and methods of implementation." Following a few months of discussions that failed to deliver a consensus, both parties have decided it's best to part ways. For now, things continue as normal with Acer's goal still being globalization of its product portfolio, whose centerpiece will remain the personal computer, according to Chairman JT Wang. He'll be the man to take over for Lanci while Acer seeks out a replacement for the outspoken Italian.
Acer's JT Wang: iPad's market share will drop to about 20 percent, maybe less
You can read that as bitter hype; then again, we're looking at a company that's known to live up to its words. In a recent interview with UDN, Acer Inc. Chairman JT Wang echoed ASUS' recent forecast regarding the iPad's erosion of the netbook market in the US and UK, although he also pointed out that netbooks are still selling like hotcakes in developing countries. As for the tablet market itself, Wang believes that Apple's closed camp operation will ultimately bow to other joint forces once the market matures, thus lowering the iPad's current near-100 percent share to somewhere between 20 and 30 percent. Hell, the man even suggested this could be an over-estimation, and referred to the Mac's minuscule 5 percent global share over the last few years. And you know what? He might be right. That doesn't mean that the iPad's days are numbered though since Apple's never been interested in taking part in the "race to the bottom." Apple measures success by profits, not market share -- even a small percentage of high-margin laptop and smartphone sales has proven to be a very good thing for Apple's bottom line. Besides, if open is such a great thing, we'd like to question Wang on what caused the Windows-based tablets to flop in the first place? Regardless, this would certainly be another prediction to look out for in a few years' time.
Acer expects to overtake HP as world's biggest laptop vendor by year's end (updated)
Ah, the inexorable rise of a once-small Taiwanese company. Acer chairman JT Wang has told investors in a conference call this week that his company is on track to overtake HP in worldwide laptop shipments before the year is through. That assertion is backed up by Gartner's data, cited in the Wall Street Journal, which indicates that Acer shipped 9.49 million mobile computers in the first quarter of 2010, just ahead of HP's 9.47 million. Positive vibes are also being felt on the desktop front, where Acer aims to shift 10 million units this year, while a decent $15 million is being invested into "developing a smartphone platform based on Google Inc.'s Android." We'll be curious to see whether this thrifty strategy pays off against HP's ebullient $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm, but one thing's for sure: PC vendors are hungry for some of that sweet smartphone pie. Update: Gartner has corrected Acer's worldwide shipments number down to 9.12 million, placing it a close second behind HP for Q1.
Acer to launch first Chrome OS netbook, Android-based Aspire One sales disappoint
Acer loves it some Google. And unless Google's trying to stamp out your revenue stream, who doesn't? Now Acer chairman, JT Wang, says that he expects to be first to market with an official Chrome OS netbook -- sometime in the second half of 2010 according to DigiTimes' sources. In fact, JT says that Acer's been working on a Chrome OS device since mid-2009. This despite admittedly weaker than expected demand for its dual-boot Android netbook, the Aspire One AOD250. Guess even the Google halo isn't enough to shoehorn its smartphone OS into a market dominating position on cheap ultra-portables. It's worth pointing out that DigiTimes' moles aren't saying anything new with the launch time-frame since Google's target for its gold Chrome OS build has been 2H of 2010 ever since the lightweight OS was announced. Not that the timing matters too much since we'll likely be seeing plenty of Chromium OS netbooks flooding the grey market long before the second half of 2010.
First Acer Android netbook will dual-boot Windows
Ha, and you thought that you'd be getting away from the Microsoft tax. Sorry -- Acer chairman JT Wang says that the first Android netbooks will ship with Windows in dual-boot configurations. While your first reaction might be to call JT a Microsoft patsy, he's not, it's smart to hedge, actually, since Android is unproven as a netbook OS and Wal-mart consumers usually don't like being surprised by computers that don't work like the ol' home computer. Besides, these Android netbooks seem to be targeting carriers as resellers so you'll like get a big fat discount when you take one home on contract. Happy?
