Gianfranco Lanci, the former CEO of Acer, got kicked out of the Taiwanese firm in March. Considering we never saw an Acer smartphone on store shelves and that their tablets had the magic ability to make us pass out due to boredom, it wasn’t really that much of a surprise. New details thanks to an interview from All Things D sheds some more light on the story however. “At that time, I already saw if we want to become a major player in this new world, we needed to do certain investments, mainly on software and on smartphones and tablets, on touch,” Lanci said, later adding that Acer had between 300 and 400 engineers, and that he needed to more than double that to execute on his vision. The problem was that the talent he needed wasn’t in Taiwan, and when he wanted to look for help elsewhere he was accused of trying to “de-Taiwanese” the company. “I said, ‘Look, it is not de-Taiwanization,’ it is just globalization. If we want to be in the top three (PC makers) in the next three to five years, we need to be a global company and we need to leverage resources wherever they are.”
During his 8 year at Acer, Lanci transformed the company from one that made $10 billion to one that made $20 billion. He feels that if were still there he could have made Acer into a $30 billion company, but he’s not exactly saddened for getting the boot. Lanci wants to stay in the industry, and after a brief vacation he’s now trying to find a job. Asked which companies he thinks are doing the right thing in this industry, and he points to Apple, Samsung, and potentially HP, if they don’t manage to screw up what they have with webOS.
We’ll just have to wait and see, but right now we don’t associate Acer with the mobile industry. At all.