AllThingsD » The Financial Times

Fumbled Tablet Strategy Cost Acer CEO His Job, Sources Say

John Paczkowski — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:07:58 +0000

CEO Gianfranco Lanci’s departure from Acer yesterday was both sudden and unexpected. What precipitated it? The company line says it was his differences with Acer’s board of directors. But over what, specifically? Evidently, Lanci grievously misjudged the impact that tablets would have on the company’s core business.

Sources at Acer told DigiTimes that Apple’s iPad undercut the company badly in the netbook market. And it quickly became clear that simply boosting shipments of notebooks to win market share was no longer a viable strategy. “We were almost too successful in the past…but more recently the iPad and other new form factors have had a very big impact on the PC market,” Acer Chairman J.T. Wang told the Financial Times. “We have to change our business strategy.”

And leadership. Because Acer needs to replicate in tablets its success in notebooks. To do that, it must approach the market as Apple or HTC might, searching out profits on high margin devices. And according to Acer execs, Lanci was too busy fighting a pricing war with Dell and Hewlett-Packard to realize it. Said Acer CFO Tu Che-min, “There is good consensus among the board members that the tablet is the way to go.”

Time to chase profits over market share.

A FiOS TV Tablet From Motorola?

John Paczkowski — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:26:57 +0000

Motorola has developed an Android tablet and hopes to launch it before the end of the year. This according to people briefed on the company’s plans who tell The Financial Times that it could hit stores “as early as this autumn.” The device is said to have a 10-inch screen and front and back-facing cameras for video capture and conferencing. And it’s rumored to be both thinner and lighter than Apple’s iPad. Beyond that, it’s main competitive advantage over the iPad is believed to be FiOS TV integration thanks to a deal with Verizon. And that could be key, since Apple hasn’t yet managed to roll out that subscription TV service it’s been working on.

2009 PC Sales Likely Lousy

John Paczkowski — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:15:10 +0000

It’s nothing we don’t already know: Undermined by the worst recession in 50 years, PC sales are slowing. Drastically.

There will be no double-digit sales gains in 2009. The six consecutive years of rising PC shipments we’ve seen will not be followed by a seventh. Instead, they’re likely to be followed by a decline–the first since 2001. With business and consumer spending falling and economic fundamentals askew, technology research group IDC fears that its last official forecast for 2009 PC sales–four percent growth–is unlikely to hold.

“We’re definitely more pessimistic,” IDC’s Loren Loverde told the Financial Times. “As things sink in, it could easily be in negative territory.”