Acer has carved out a niche as a cost leader in computers, a business that made the Taiwan-based company popular in the past few years. However, as the personal computer business has generally struggled the last couple of years, Acer has also struggled. This paper will analyze the performance of Acer. Acer's mission is "to contribute to society," meaning that the more people have access to technology, the better (Acer, 2014). The brand values are curious, progressive and human. While this provides little insight into what the company does or how it seeks to do it, Acer has been most active recently in the personal computer business. As this business has transformed since 2000, laptops have become the number one product in the industry, but standardization of this product has been a boon to low cost providers. Acer, a former OEM manufacturer of personal computers, has become one of the leaders in the industry because of its ability to produce personal computers at a low cost. Most of Acer's business comes from the low- and medium-end of the personal computer business.

However, this industry has recently fallen on hard times. The introduction of tablets has syphoned off a lot of business from PC makers, because many consumers only use computing devices for basic tasks that are easy to perform on tablets. While power users generally have no need for tablets as substitutes for PCs, Acer does not generally target the power user. Thus, Acer's customers readily substitute tablets. The result is that the PC business has suffered in recent years, and Acer has...

The company has seen revenues decline, in some quarters rather sharply, as the result of this industry trend. For example, in the first quarter of 2013, Acer's revenues declined 19% year over year (PC World, 2013).
Financially, however, Acer has at least attempted to respond to this challenge. The company has been able to cut costs in response to the declining revenues, because it has recognized that such revenue declines are basically permanent in nature. As an example of the sort of financial and operational change that the company has made in response to these difficult operating conditions, Acer has written off NT$1.3 billion in raw material inventory (Acer Corporate, 2014). This move will help the company turn the corner with respect to its operations, which it feels need to be restructured to fall more in line with current operating conditions. This restructuring and the write-downs represent a case of short-term pain for long-term gain at Acer.

Organizational Structure

Acer has an organizational structure based on functions. The organization chart is on their website and can be found in Appendix A. At the highest level of the organization are functional departments such as marketing, technology, operations and finance, along with some line departments like sustainability and auditing. At the next level of the organization are a broad range of primarily functional divisions. There 18 divisions in total. They include marketing, customer service, human resources, legal, and a number of…