14 DAY TRIAL // Acer has been losing money for many months now, and all its attempts at rising from the ashes, so to speak, have thus far been met with failure. So, naturally, someone has to take the fall.
It looks like the practice of finding scapegoats is still alive and well. Not that it's completely impossible to understand.
After all, if a company has all the necessary resources but keeps failing to measure up to its challenges, the head gets blamed for it.
In this instance, Acer Chairman and CEO JT Wang is getting flack for failing to prevent Acer from dropping, financially, once again.
To be fair, the financial results for the third quarter of 2013 were really painful, with a net loss of $446 million / €330 million.
PC sales continue to be really, really weak too. It would have been understandable if the loss hadn't been so big, since everyone involved in PC sales is having a hard time, but Acer seems to be struggling more than most.
It even intends to cut its global workforce by 7% in order to make up for the losses incurred there.
It doesn't help its image that, despite PC hardships, Lenovo, HP, and Dell managed to improve their finances in Q3, even if only slightly.
So now Acer's CEO is leaving his post, just like Gianfranco Lanci resigned (or was forced out, it wasn't made totally clear) back in the first quarter of 2011. One wonders how much vindication this caused.
At this point, Acer is set to enter a period of restructuring under the leadership of President Jim Wong who will take over the post of CEO for the foreseeable future.
Ironically, Wong's departure isn't expected to have many benefits really, because product R&D and supply chain management at Acer are handled by his team anyway. So if there are any changes to look forward to, they won't come in the near future.