Dive Brief:
- PC maker Acer is restructuring into two units, one to focus on the traditional hardware market and another to hone in on newer services such as cloud, wearables and IoT, the company announced last week.
- Acer, which Gartner places as the world's sixth-largest PC provider, officially began operating under the new structure on March 25.
- In addition to notebooks, desktops and tablets, the Core Business unit will also include some new areas, like R&D, digital displays, server products and corporate business planning operations, according to Acer officials.
Dive Insight:
In recent years, PC makers have struggled to compete against the tablets and smartphones in the market. In 2015, Acer announced it $7.98 billion in revenue, down 20% from the year before.
Acer has been growing its product portfolio to expand into new areas, and the New Business umbrella will include several of those areas, including cloud services, smartphones, wearables devices, e-business and Acer's Value Lab. Splitting into two units may help the company more effectively focus on the enterprise market and the consumer market individually.
But the company is late to make a change, as other PC creators have already leapt to reinvent themselves. Traditional providers like Dell and HP moved into other areas, shifting their focus toward enterprise services and hardware sales rather than consumer-focused technology.
Hewlett-Packard recently split into two companies for similar reasons. At the time it was announced, HP executives said they hoped the split would enable each new entity to better compete in a tough market.
