In mid-2007, Acer, one of the world's largest branded PC vendor with 5.9% market share, reached a milestone. It became the third largest by acquiring Gateway, the world's eighth-largest PC vendor with 2.2% market share. The combined share of these two companies is enough to dethrone Lenovo from its third spot, with 7.3% market share. The acquisition also provided required scale for Acer, to challenge the top 2 PC vendors, Dell and Hewlett-Packard (HP).

In 2005, Acer set the goal of becoming the third largest, by surpassing Lenovo, the Chinese company that became an overnight heavyweight by acquiring IBM's PC business. Back then, analysts opined that feat, if achieved, would be a fitting finale for the rejuvenating efforts of Acer. Forbes wrote, "that would mark a stunning turnaround for a company that nearly destroyed itself less than a decade ago." Since its inception in 1976, Acer's journey had always been a roller-coaster ride, swinging between challenging the best in the industry and being marred in financial losses.

Acer was started in 1976 by Stan Shih, an electrical engineer from Taiwan's National Chiaotung University and his friends, under the name Multitech International with a capital of $25,000. Its objective was to capitalise in whatever way they could on the microprocessor chip, a hot invention at that time. The company survived by designing electronic products like hand-held electronic games for manufacturers in Taiwan. Shih was among the first to anticipate that the microprocessor, the brain of personal computers, would drive the new industrial revolution. From the early days, Shih encouraged a corporate culture that reflected his deeply held view that `human nature is basically good' and that there is no alternative to dealing honestly with people. Shih kept the engineers at Acer by sharing both technical expertize and profits. Shih learnt his business lessons when he sold duck eggs, as Fortune noted, "as a boy he learned the benefit of rapidly turning over inventory by helping his mother sell duck eggs in rural Taiwan." Further, "the profit on an individual egg was shell-thin. But sell enough of them, and a formula emerges: Low margins and high turnover can be a recipe for success."

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