Taiwan based Acer's new CEO Jason Chen has announced plans to turn the firm around and pull away from three years of losses by building on the firm's existing hardware background.
According to recently recorded figures, Acer’s full-year 2013 sales fell 16 per cent to NT$ 360.2 billion, 43 per cent lower than the firm's peak revenue in 2010. The company saw a NT$13.12 billion after-tax loss in Q3 2013 which led to Chen’s hiring and the return of Acer co-founder Stan Shih as chairman. The figures are by far the largest decrease across all major PC vendors.
Ultra-costly-mistake-book
Chen opined in his first press conference as CEO today in Taiwan, that the company’s biggest mistake had been committing too many resources too quickly into the Ultrabook and touch panel markets without realising how extensively tablet computers such as the iPad would unsettle the industry.
"We wanted to stimulate demand using new technology and we took the initiative more aggressively than anybody else, to the point where we got hurt," says Chen, according to Reuters. "Hopefully we won't repeat the same mistake we made before."
Chen added, "What we need to do now is to dig ourselves out of the hole. There are no magic bullets. We need to focus on the fundamentals." The company announced last month a change in strategy towards focusing on hardware, software and services. According to FocusTaiwan, the firm has assembled a research group of over 1,300 engineers and also applied for 130 technology patents in Taiwan during Q3 2013. Based on these 'fundamentals', Chen remains positive about Acer's future. We are also told that a new business model will debut on 1st April (seriously) coinciding with the release of new notebooks offering Acer's impending Build Your Own Cloud service.
