Acer, the world’s third-largest PC vendor, promoted both of its top executives to new positions on Friday within the Acer Group and company.
Gianfranco Lanci, who came to Acer from Texas Instruments (TI) when Acer bought the TravelMate laptop PC business from TI in 1997, will add the CEO position to his current role as president of Acer.
The company’s laptop business has been a driving force in its double-digit growth over the past few years and helped catapult Acer into the number-three spot in the PC industry.
J.T. Wang, the current chairman of Acer, relinquished his CEO title at Acer but took on the title of Acer Group CEO on Friday, Acer said in a statement.
Wang took over as chairman at Acer 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.