The departure of 14-year veteran Gianfranco Lanci from Acer Inc (宏碁), one of the world’s top three PC brands, shocked the tech industry yesterday, but it wasn’t as shocking for Acer’s employees.
“Rumors that Lanci was leaving had been spreading for some time,” an internal source told the Taipei Times yesterday.
Acer’s profitability dwindled in the fourth quarter of last year and is expected to continue dropping in the first quarter of this year, with Lanci’s failure to come up with solid strategies for the company’s future seemingly having cost him his job.
Acer’s fourth-quarter profit was 9.1 percent less than the NT$4.29 billion (US$145.8 million) it made in the third quarter of last year, company data showed.
On a year-on-year basis, it rose 11.4 percent to NT$3.9 billion.
Revenue in the fourth quarter, meanwhile, saw a 10.5 percent decline from NT$167.2 billion in the third. It dipped 11 percent year-on-year to NT$149.7 billion.
FALLING SALES
The company said last Friday that first-quarter revenue looked set to fall about 10 percent from the previous three months amid weaker demand from Western Europe and the US, adding that second-quarter sales should roughly be the same as in the first quarter.
Lanci had been granted power by Acer’s board over major decisionmaking processes in the past and therefore could claim credit for Acer’s achievements, the source said.
This was fine as long as he steered the PC maker into profitability, but without concrete financial results recently and no solid direction going forward, it was the board that called it quits, the source added.
MULTINATIONAL
“Don’t you think Acer is now a ‘multinational enterprise?’” the source said, referring to Lanci’s dismissal by the board — an uncommon practice among Taiwanese companies.
Acer, under Lanci’s guidance, had been eager to seize the world’s No. 1 PC spot and aimed to unseat US giants Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard Co.
While the goal meant Acer was beating rivals with a surge in shipments of desktops and portable computers, it meant sacrificing profitability to boost shipments, Acer founder Stan Shih (施振榮) said on Tuesday.
Focusing on profitability instead of shipments should be the way forward in the face of drastic changes in the PC landscape, he said.
“The impact of recent drastic changes in the PC industry, especially smartphones and tablet PCs, have been far greater than expected,” Shih wrote in an e-mail to the media yesterday.
To cope with such changes, Acer has outlined new strategies, but the management held differing views.
“After many dialogues, no consensus was reached and the board had to make a decision for the company’s sustainable operations, otherwise Acer’s future would be held back,” Shih wrote.
In his role as president and CEO, Lanci contributed significantly to Acer’s growth over the past seven to eight years. His departure will have a certain impact on Acer, but Shih — who retired from the company and now is the chairman of iD SoftCapital Group (智融集團) — said in the e-mail that teamwork would be key to success if members work together to carry out the company’s development strategies.
INDUSTRY VETERAN
Born in Turin, Italy, in 1954, Lanci graduated from the Politecnico of Turin with a degree in civil engineering.
He joined Texas Instruments (TI) Italia in 1981, and at the age of 37 became country manager for the portable computers and printers division in Italy, the Middle East and Africa.
In 1996, he was appointed president of Europe, Middle East and Africa for TI’s personal productivity products division. When TI’s portable PC business was acquired by Acer in 1997, Lanci became managing director of Acer Italy.
He immediately began consolidating the channel and partner relations at all levels, pushing Acer to the No. 1 notebook brand ranking in Italy since 1997.
In 2000, Lanci became president of Acer Europe and began building up a strong European organization. Later in 2002, Lanci took on the role of Acer Europe, Middle East and Africa president and introduced his proven channel business model that turned record-setting profits across the region. He was promoted to Acer’s president in 2005 and doubled as CEO since June 2008.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure