Gawker: valleywag, gateway

Coleman out as Gateway CEO

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:58:05 EST

Ed Coleman will leave his post as CEO of Acer subsidiary Gateway at the end of January, according to reports. Coleman's departure paves the way for integrating Gateway with its new Taiwanese parent, which completed its $710 million Gateway acquisition in October. President of Acer Pan America Rudi Schmidleithner will assume Coleman's responsibilities. But we expect ruthless Acer chairman J. T. Wang to keep calling the shots back in Taiwan.

Acer boss turns the PC business into a knife fight

Owen Thomas — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:59:41 EDT

J.T. Wang, the chairman of Acer, looks like such a nice guy. But appearances are deceiving. The Taiwanese businessman is determined to keep his PC maker from becoming an also-ran. His company just announced plans to buy Gateway, the once-famed PC seller bruised by competition with Dell and Hewlett-Packard, for $710 million. The deal cuts at Chinese archrival Lenovo twice — first, by vaulting Acer past Lenovo into third place for PC market share. Second, by disrupting Lenovo's plans to buy Packard Bell, a fading PC brand that's still strong in Europe. Gateway, from a past acquisition, got rights of first refusal on any deal to buy Packard Bell — and Acer now plans to exercise those rights. Let's see — for a mere $710 million, Wang gets bragging rights, a bigger share of the vital U.S. market, and a way to bloody a rival's nose. Sounds cheap to me.

Friday headlines: Those naughty Brazilians

Nick Douglas — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:36:30 EDT

Gateway rejects an offer to sell its retail outlet from the former owner of eMachines, who also offered to buy the whole company. [MarketWatch]
Intel declines to comment on the rumors that CEO Paul Otellini will announce 10-20k layoffs (!) on Tuesday. By the way, if they wanted to stay quiet about this, why not bury the news today, on the quietest Friday of the year? [Boston Globe]
Oracle promises to be careful with its political contributions this year, unlike the year it dumped $25 thousand on ex-governor Gray Davis's reelection bid, later winning a $95-million contract. Now that is a productive investment! [The Register]
Google CEO Eric Schmidt declines the stock option offer that all new Apple board members get. No one knows why — maybe someone poorly explained the options backdating scandal to him. [MarketWatch]

Nobody's nice to Intel

ndouglas — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:06:07 EST

First Apple dressed Paul Otellini in a bunny suit. Then analysts gossiped that Dell would switch to AMD chips. Now Gateway brings Intel a new headache.

The "computers for dummies" manufacturer couldn't hold it in — Gateway released a laptop using Intel's new Core Solo processor, three weeks before Intel planned to announce it. Now Intel can either launch the processor early or sit around looking dumb. And thus Intel joins the crowd of people — mostly Gateway users — who want to smack Gateway.

Gateway Jumps The Gun on Intel, Accidentally Announces New CPU [DailyTech]