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Communities of Leadership: J. T Wang’s Acer Group
1 Comment · Posted by Scott in Case Studies
According to Gartner Group, more than 84 million PCs were shipped worldwide in the first quarter of 2010. H-P shipped the most, at 15.3 million, but Acer of Taiwan (J.T. Wang, CEO) is now a clear number two, well ahead of traditional players like Dell and Toshiba. According to Acer, citing Gartner statistics, it is now number one in the world in notebook computers. Acer is also now number one in overall PC shipments in EMEA markets.
The global Q1 market was 27.4% larger than the year-ago quarter, but H-P’s year-on-year growth, at 19.9%,was less than the overall market’s. Acer’s was much higher at 54.3%. Other players with high growth rates included China’s Lenovo at 59.2% and Taiwan’s ASUS (the world’s largest producer of motherboards and fairly new in complete PC’s) at 114.8%.
Acer’s business model has a couple of interesting features. It seems they have spun off or outsourced all their manufacturing: they have only about 7,000 employees. They focus on getting high quality, customer focused designs to market quickly, on maintaining the lowest costs and at the same time high quality, and they operate on very low margins. Operating margins have been moving up as they grow, but remain under 3% in Q1 2010, according to company financial presentations. They sell through channels and they are increasingly focused on the recogntion value of their brands.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s coverage of the company quotes Calvin Huang, at Daiwa Securities in Taipei: “Acer keeps being faster with new products, which is why they can outgrow competitors. Notebooks remain the strongest area of growth, and that’s Acer’s key product.”
What seems clear is that soon the global business of small computers (one might argue computers generally) is likely to be dominated by Taiwanese and Chinese firms. Acer is the visible leader among that group for now.
From its 2008 annual report (2009 doesn’t seem to be out yet), Acer identifies its core values as follows (with my selections from amplifying comments):
- Value-creating (“for shareholders.. customers…employees)
- Customer-centric (“love and respect for customers…listen, learn, and improve…walk the talk (deliver on our promises”))
- Ethical (“trust, respect, and honesty”)
- Caring (“energetic and inspiring workplace…growth potential…teamwork”)
- Innovative (“think big…think smart….think outside the box”)
- Fast (“think fast…act quickly…get there first”)
- Effective (“clear objectives…clear responsibilties…keep it simple”)
The growing list of Interesting Communities of Leadership is athttp://lovingwork.org/interesting-communities-of-leadership
Scott is scott@lovingwork.org and @scottdowns3 on Twitter.
Acer · business · community · culture · customers · innovation · love · people · values
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