Acer acquires stake in PChome unit

[TAIPEI] Taiwanese computer maker Acer said yesterday it has made its first major investment since overhauling its top management late last year, acquiring a 15.6 per cent stake in a PChome subsidiary.

While declining to disclose the value of the deal, the statement said the market capital of PChomePay, the payment business of the leading Internet trade group, had increased to NT$450 million (S$19 million) from NT$380 million as a result.

"Under the ICT industry's paradigm shift Acer is going beyond hardware-based thinking; the investment in e-commerce and our self-built cloud (Build Your Own Cloud or BYOC) is our important deployment of 'hardware + software + services' transformation," Acer chairman and company founder Stan Shih said.