Taiwan’s Acer Group is restructuring to form five groups, and Acer chief executive officer and founder Stan Shih has stepped down as chief of the PC business, but remains as president and CEO of the overall Acer holding company Acer Group. Most importantly, Shih’s task is to turn around the troubled DRAM manufacturer Acer Semiconductor Manufacturing Inc, now to be called Acer Semiconductor Group, which is to become a chip foundry. Meanwhile Simon Lin, who joined the company in 1979 and has been a faithful lieutenant to Shih, becomes CEO of the PC products group previously called Acer Inc, which will be combined with the American and European business to form Acer Information Products Group, manufacturing PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics. Acer describes the restructuring as a movement to a customer centric company emphasizing a strong orientation toward intellectual property, in other words attempting to develop original products rather than just being a bulk OEM, in an industry which yet again is seeing rapidly declining margins for PC manufacturers. The company also has two services divisions Acer International Service Group and Acer Sertek Service Group and the remaining manufacturing business the Acer Peripheral Group.
