The group announced in a statement that Simon Lin would be president and chief executive officer of Acer Inc, replacing Stan Shih, who would be chairman and CEO of the entire Acer Group.

"We want to enhance Acer's global competitiveness in the personal computer business, and prepare ourselves for the next millennium, especially as both internal and external business environments are becoming increasingly diverse and complex," the statement quoted Shih as saying.

"Our objective is also to improve Acer's position for capturing fresh business opportunities, and to realise the Acer vision of becoming a customer-centric company stressing service and intellectual property business," Shih said.

The new structure will comprise five subgroups, including Acer Information Products Group,headed by CEO Simon Lin; Acer Semiconductor Group, led by acting CEO Stan Shih; Acer International Service Group, chaired by CEO William Lu; Acer Sertek Service Group, headed by CEO J.T. Wang; and Acer Peripherals Group, with K.Y. Lee as CEO.

Analysts said the re-engineering would allow Shih to focus on the money-losing microchip unit, Acer Semiconductor.

Shih has said he was keen to diversify out of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, manufacturing and into logic integrated circuits and made-to-order "foundry" chipmaking.Sharp price falls of DRAMs worldwide in the past few quarters had led to huge losses for all DRAM makers in Taiwan, and many of them were switching to the foundry chipmaking.