Acer expands into smart vehicle development

June 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Acer expands into smart vehicle development
Friday, May 30, 2014

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TAIPEI — Acer Inc. (宏碁) is working with two providers of connected car technology to design a cloud-based advanced remote device management system, in an ambitious expansion of the Taiwanese PC manufacturer into smart vehicle development.

The two new Acer partners are Germany’s Advanced Telematic Systems (ATS) and Taiwan-based Studio —Gene Co., which are testing connected car systems using the Acer Open Platform, Acer Chairman Stan Shih said Thursday at an inauguration ceremony of Acer’s cloud solutions experience center.

Acer is already investing resources and developing concept products with partners, including apps that record in-car settings and routes of different drivers, in anticipation of the growing prevalence of the “Internet of Things,” Shih said.

Ed Liao, vice president of Asia business development at ATS, said partnering with Acer is part of the company’s efforts to bridge the gap between the IT and automotive industries.

The first connected cars using ATS’s integrated solutions could hit several markets in Europe and Japan in 2015, Liao said, but added that car manufacturers will have the freedom to incorporate ATS’s solution with a cloud platform operated by Acer or other providers.

Acer opened an experience center for its Build Your Own Cloud (BYOC) business that day in Taoyuan County to showcase a new range of its cloud services.

The new center demonstrates cloud-based services such as e-books, e-auctions and e-ticketing that are already going online, as well as prototypes in cooperation with partners, such as applications designed for smart vehicles and connected home appliances.

Cloud Solutions Demo Center

Acer opened an experience center for its BYOC business Thursday in Taoyuan County to showcase a new range of its cloud services.

The new center demonstrates cloud-based services such as e-books, e-auctions and e-ticketing that are already going online, as well as prototypes in cooperation with partners such as applications designed for smart vehicles and connected home appliances.

Acer CEO Jason Chen (陳俊聖) said at the inauguration ceremony that he expects his company’s revenue from cloud business to grow “multiple” times this year thanks to the launch of its new cloud services.

He declined to specify the revenue target, saying only that cloud business accounted for just a small part of Acer’s total revenue in 2013.

The BYOC is a system for users to put together cloud services that manage music and photos across Acer PCs and mobile devices, according to Acer.

The new business is part of the PC vendor’s attempt to transform itself from a hardware company into a “hardware plus software plus services” company amid a shrinking global PC industry.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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