Chen takes over executive duties from company founder Stan Shih, who returned to the company in November and will remain Acer's Chairman, Acer said. Acer has seen its fortunes tank after PC sales fell because of the recession and firms that had a back up plan involving mobiles succeeded.
Last month, it reported a worse-than-expected quarterly loss of $446 million for the June-September period, which prompted then-CEO J.T. Wang to clean out his desk and exit the building. Acer culled 7 percent of workforce.
Chen, who worked for Intel for 14 years before joining TSMC and since 2008 is TSMC's senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. Hopefully he will not adopt TSMC’s “zoo keeper” approach to staffing. Otherwise Acer will have to put nets at the bottom of its buildings too.
