Acer, another Taiwanese technology firm with a fast-falling performance, has fallen into an unprecedented slump

After HTC, another fast-falling Taiwanese technology firm Acer has fallen into an unprecedented slump.

November 5, Acer disclosed its latest quarterly earnings, with a sharp loss of NT $13.1 billion in three. The company announced that the chairman and CEO Wang resignation, Acer CEO Wong (Jimwong) will be the CEO next January 1. Wang will continue as chairman until the end of June next year, that is, the end of term. At the same time, Acer's business team has planned a complete reorganization plan, including a streamlined workforce. Acer shares tumbled 6.89% on November 6, affected by layoffs and restructuring news.

Sun Yongjie, an IT commentator, told the Daily Economic news reporter that Taiwan's IT companies were either collectively depressed or originated in an awkward market position. In the industrial scale, Taiwan it enterprises are not as big as the mainland enterprises, lack of strategic accumulation, but also do not have a foothold in the mainland market scale advantages, in the innovative ability, but also less than the European and American enterprises. As a result, the weakness of Taiwan's IT companies is magnified when the industry is in the growth bottleneck.

Acer's financial losses, business restructuring

November 5, Acer announced that its management team has planned a complete reorganization plan, the Board also launched a change planning. The Personnel business reorganization plan, including the manpower streamlining, the product plan suspension, the mold material and the legal expense Reserve, its one-time cost is about 150 million dollars.

Before announcing the restructuring plan, Acer disclosed its third-quarter earnings, which showed a significant loss of NT $13.1 billion in the quarter. This is the fifth time Acer has seen a quarterly loss since 2011.

According to earnings, Acer's third-quarter operating loss of NT $2.57 billion, combined with the loss of NT $9.943 billion by the proposed intangible assets, resulted in an after-tax loss of NT $13.12 billion, a net loss of NT $4.82 per share, and a total loss of NT $4.76 for the first three quarters. The cost of cutting 150 million dollars will be reflected in the 4th quarter, so Acer will continue to lose money in the quarter.

As early as June this year, Wang to shareholders at Acer's shareholders ' meeting, Hu Hongyu has been losing for two consecutive years, and the company's share price has fallen to its lowest level in 10 years, Wang said, "It is a big burden for me to see Acer's share price fall so low." ”

According to earnings reports, Acer lost $2.91 billion in fiscal year 2012, and 2011 in fiscal year with a net loss of NT $6.6 billion. At the time, Wang said, the global PC industry was undergoing a transformation, and companies were suffering, "but we have conducted a series of evaluations of Acer's business model, which will soon resume and companies will adjust their product lines and strengthen their brands." ”

Yet, over the next quarter, Acer still has no sign of recovery and is in for a huge loss.

Global laptop sales fell 9.5% in the third quarter of 2013, according to IDC. In addition, China's Taiwan Region media reports, local research agency Digitimesresearch said that the world's five notebook manufacturers October shipments fell 18%, of which the top three notebook manufacturers of the shipments fell 14%. The slump in the industry has had a direct impact on Acer's performance.

"While the global decline in the PC industry is partly attributable to the rise of new mobile computing devices such as tablets and smartphones, fierce competition in the industry is the root cause, and Lenovo has undoubtedly played a role in changing the pattern of the PC industry," he said. In an interview with the Daily Economic news reporter, Sun Yongjie, the IT critic, said.

He said that, in the context of the changes in the PC industry, Lenovo, the first seat, used its benign (market share, revenue and profit) growth to give its opponents the pressure.

Asus invented the world's first netbook, a slightly diminished, but more compact, functionally economical computer that once sparked the global PC industry's emulation. But with the popularity of Apple's ipad, the portability advantage of netbooks is no longer a blip.

Scale and lack of innovation

Li Kaifu, chairman of Innovation Factory, attended the visionary summit of Chinese business leaders in Taiwan, and took the pulse of Taiwan's pioneering and innovation community, saying that Taiwan's entrepreneurial innovation was "sick" like him.

Lee said that Taiwan's innovative entrepreneurship in the past has been a great success, but, once the "Asian Dragons" leader, after the hardware, Taiwan's IT companies have missed the software revolution, the network Revolution, the mobile revolution.

Over the past decade, Taiwanese IT companies from the foundry industry have become aware of their own short boards and have been competing with their former OEM clients for their own brands. The Taiwanese consumer electronics brand, represented by HTC, Acer and Asus, relies on stunning innovation to become the industry leader and so close to the industry's first position.

HTC, with its sensitivity to smartphones, has created the world's first smartphone with an Android system, which dominates the early Android phone market. In the 2011, HTC was in control of the One-fifth smartphone market in the United States, after the first Apple.

Similarly, Acer relied on early innovation and cost advantages to become the world's second-largest computer manufacturer in 2010. But when consumer electronics are becoming a common bargain, Taiwanese IT companies adept at low-cost follower lines are no longer more dominant in manufacturing cost control. With the mainland's labor costs cheaper, Taiwanese manufacturers have set up factories in the mainland, Taiwan's technology industry has a generational and brand diversion.

However, many years of generational tradition has influenced the thinking of product design of Taiwanese brands, and in the context of the stagnation of innovation ability, Taiwan's technology brands collectively appear to be in trouble.

Sun Yongjie that, in the industrial scale, Taiwan's it enterprises are not as big as mainland enterprises, lack of strategic accumulation, not to have a foothold in the entire Chinese market scale advantages and brand background, while in the brand building, product innovation capabilities, Taiwan IT companies are inferior to overseas enterprises, such as Apple, Samsung and so on, facing the embarrassment of "underachievement". Therefore, in the industrial growth to the bottleneck, that is either to fight the scale, or to spell innovation, the weakness of Taiwanese enterprises immediately emerged.

Taiwan's local brand consultant, Mark-stocker, says the simple formula for Taiwan's economic miracle is to find a product, create it at a lower cost, find a large order, and then look for another product to repeat the process.

In contrast to the entrepreneurial culture of mainland China and Taiwan, Kai-Fu Lee said Taiwan was a long way from the mainland in the IT sector. The mainland market is huge, the entrepreneur's desire for success is very strong, has the wolf sex. Taiwanese entrepreneurs ' products and even horizons seem to be limited by the "small" local market in Taiwan, only to see the Taiwan market, the investment environment is also poor, no return will not want to invest. He called on Taiwan to create innovative soil.

The designer of a foundry said he had communicated with Asus and Acer's product managers that they thought, "Don't worry about our product image." In addition, the project managers of these enterprises, many of them have engineers and research background, most of them do not believe in the company's internal designers.

It can be seen that Taiwan's IT companies are still using cost-effective thinking to create brands, and even innovative products, which directly led to its inability to respond to industrial change.

"Now the industry foregone time is very short, it is also difficult to hear the ' Dark Horse ' enterprises." Like Apple has the innovation of the first advantage, as well as Samsung has a whole industrial chain scale advantage of enterprises, in order to be in the industrial transformation of the fierce competition in the foothold. Sun Yongjie said that once the industry restructuring, such as Lenovo's enterprises, there is a huge resource system, strong financial support, can be successful, and Taiwan enterprises do not have the resources and funds, will appear inertia decline.