Acer President and CEO Gianfranco Lanci has resigned from the company, over differing views on the future development of the company, Acer said Thursday.
Lanci’s resignation is effective immediately. J.T. Wang, the chairman of Acer, took over from Lanci in the interim, the company said in a news release.
Lanci’s views on Acer’s future development differed “from a majority of the board members, and could not reach a consensus following several months of dialog,” Acer said.
“They placed different levels of importance on scale, growth, customer value creation, brand position enhancement, and on resource allocation and methods of implementation,” Acer said.
Lanci could not immediately be reached for comment.
Lanci came to Acer from Texas Instruments (TI) when Acer bought the TravelMate laptop PC business from TI in 1997. He was named president of Acer in 2005, and CEO in 2008, retaining his title of president.
The company’s laptop business has been a driving force of double-digit growth at the company for years, and helped catapult Acer into the top three in the global PC industry, behind Hewlett-Packard and in constant competition with Dell for the second ranking.
Acer’s news release credited Lanci with contributing significantly to Acer’s growth. The company said it appreciated his efforts and wished him the best in future endeavors.
Wang has been chairman of Acer since taking over from company founder Stan Shih several years ago, after Acer split itself into three distinct companies in order to separate its branded business from its contract manufacturing operations.
Acer took over as the branded company, while Wistron took most of the PC-related contract manufacturing and BenQ took on mobile phone and PC-related work.
Shih retired from Acer in December 2004.
