Adding insult to injury
In some ways Acer's recent fortunes are directly analogous to those of the global economy. Acer's strategic error was to over-extend itself in the good times in the search of ever-greater growth. But when the excrement struck the ventilator back on 2008, and growth disappeared, it had no plan B.
It seems fitting, given the downgrade of Italy's sovereign debt by Standard & Poor's today, that the chief architect of this unsustainable short-termism at Acer was the Italian Gianfranco Lanci, who suddenly left the company at the end of March this year.
Not only did he oversee the blinkered, growth-at-all-cost, strategy, but on his watch European executives apparently massaged the sales figures, resulting in inventory imbalances that cost Acer hundreds of millions of dollars to rectify.
None of this seems to have put off PC rival Lenovo, however, which recently appointed Lanci to the role of consultant. Lanci will remain in Italy, but will report directly to Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang. While he has a general remit to help Lenovo's worldwide consumer business, much of his focus will be on integrating German PC-maker Medion, which Lenovo acquired in June. Lanci had plenty of experience with this sort of thing when Acer acquired Gateway, Packard Bell and emachines.
Lanci may be coming in as a consultant at first, but you have to wonder if he's being groomed to replace Rory Read, who was recently poached by AMD to become its CEO. In fact, we wouldn't be at all surprised in Lance himself interviewed for the AMD gig.
It will be interesting to see how influential Lanci becomes at Lenovo, but we sincerely hope we don't see a repetition of Acer's irritating multi-brand strategy. Also, it's probably best to keep Lanci away from press events, as his delivery is pretty far from electrifying.
"Lenovo is fully committed to the PC industry," said Yang, presumably as a dig at HP. "We are very optimistic about its future, while making significant long-term investments in the mobile internet. Because of this, exceptional people like Gianfranco are joining Lenovo.
"As a consultant to us, Gianfranco brings years of expertise and insights to Lenovo that will help us strengthen our growing global consumer business. Talented people are joining Lenovo because of our commitment to the PC industry, outstanding momentum and optimism about the future. We will continue to strengthen our company by building the best global team in the industry."
To add insult to injury, the latest global PC market figures from iSuppli show that Lenovo overtook Acer to become the third biggest PC vendor globally. A year ago Acer was in second place, by volume, Lenovo seems to have been the main recipient of Acer's lost business.
"Lenovo has tremendous momentum in the market. We continue to not only outgrow the market, but also significantly outpace our competitors. With our own rapid growth, combined with the successful execution of our joint venture in Japan with NEC and our acquisition of Medion in Germany, we fully expect to be number 2 in worldwide PCs this year," said Yang recently.
