The departure of the founders of PKLot Inc (鷹諾實業), a parking and navigation start-up that Acer invested in late 2016, is not expected to affect its integration with smart transportation solutions provider Acer ITS Inc (宏碁智通), Acer Inc (宏碁) said yesterday.
“The technology behind the app has been transferred to Acer. The service of the mobile app will continue, and Acer’s plan for Acer ITS will keep going,” an Acer official told the Taipei Times by telephone.
PKLot is known for its parking lot searching app, Parkinglot APP (停車大聲公), which has been downloade more than 1.5 million times and has 300,000 monthly active users in Taiwan.
Acer ITS took over the operations of PKLot, which was founded by Ronald Yu (余致緯), in the second half of last year, as Acer plans to integrate all of its transportation-related subsidiaries into one unit, people familiar with the matter said.
Acer chairman and CEO Jason Chen (陳俊聖) on Dec. 21 said the company was planning to list some of its new businesses, including Acer ITS, on the stock market to cultivate long-term growth drivers.
Yu on Sunday said in a blog post that all the founders left Acer on Dec. 31, because they are no longer on the same page as Acer in terms of its future plan for smart transportation solutions.
“The investor who used to support us plans to integrate all relevant transportation solutions and make an initial public offering, but to be integrated and listed on the stock market — it is not what we can handle,” Yu said in the post.
Yu said the founders would have been “limited” by the corporate framework and many things that they wish to develop would have been halted by administrative procedures if they had not chosen to leave Acer.
The Acer official declined to comment on Yu’s remarks and did not disclose the number of PKLot employees who left the firm, but but wished them all the best.
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