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“We need our own R&D. Most companies in Taiwan do product development. They don’t do research,” says Acer CEO Jason Chen.OCTOBER 2018 FORBES ASIA | 23ing devices contribute to overall income.
But this is no longer a volume play: Acer’s
industry rank in PCs fell from No. 4 in
the world (even in its slump years) to No.
6 last year on declining quarterly ship-
ments and back to No. 5 by mid- 2018 at 4
million units sold, according to data from
market research irm Gartner.
Under Chen, Acer also formed a re-
search and development unit that gets 1 %
of company revenues. “We need our own
R&D,” he says. “Most companies in Ta i-
wan do product development. hey don’t
do research.” he R&D unit is Acer’s irst
since it separated 14 years ago from Wis-
tron, which now assembles electronics for
the likes of Apple. he R&D budget has
increased 5 0% over the past four years.
Besides pushing on the game-player
front, the R&D team is looking into arti-
icial intelligence schemes—for example,
to help taxi drivers ind waiting passen-
gers or to guide any driver to empty park-
ing spaces. About 200 people work in re-search alone, an outlier as Chen sees it.
Acer hasn’t given up its foothold in
the education sector, which kept it viable
during the lean years. It still develops tab-
lets under the Iconia brand. But the tablet
Chen likes to tout is the world’s irst that
runs on Google’s cloud-based Chrome-
book operating system. Acer introduced
the Ta b 1 0, for students, this year ater
more than a half-decade of making
Chromebook PCs and taking a leading
share of those in 201 7.
Chen deserves credit for “gett ing the
company back on its feet,” says Bryan Ma,
devices research vice president for IDC
in Singapore. But he cautions that gam-
ing devices might not drive income over
the long term. “What gets tricky is the
fact that the PC market today is largely
being driven by commercial sales rather
than consumer, the former of which Acer
is the underdog in when compared to gi-
ants like HP and Dell,” Ma says. “Acer, of
course, can still carve out a niche in seg-ments like gaming, but it’ll require some
very focused marketing, on which other
vendors are prioritized, too.”
Acer has a game plan for the mass
nongaming market, including profession-
als who work in diferent places through-
out the day. It calls for making notebooks
thinner and lighter without a hit to pro-
cessor speed, Chen says. He bills the 14 -
inch Swit 7 notebook as “the thinnest
computer in the world” at less than 1 cen-
timeter top to bottom when the screen is
folded down. he Swit 5 also weighs an
unusually light 990 grams. “Even though
they are thin, they are robust, solid,” he
says.
A good salesman has to be an opti-
mist, and Chen sometimes must face of
against the frustrations of the technolo-
gists among his staf of 7,900. “he big-
gest headache? People keep telling me
problems,” Chen says. “I keep ignor-
ing them. hat’s my style, to focus on the
bright spot, the opportunities.” F