Shih, who is already retired from Acer and is now chairman of a consortium of Taiwanese venture capitalists, was in the country to promote the second phase of the APEC Digital Opportunity Center (ADOC) which he has proposed. He also sits as a governor of the Asian Institute of Management in Makati City.

"The Philippines cannot build it alone," he said, pointing out that the country does not yet have the healthy ecosystem from which Taiwan, and now China, grew their industrial base.

Shih said the Philippines needs to find its niche in the technology manufacturing area that is different from China. He said Taiwan, upon realizing that it could no longer compete with the world’s emerging superpower in the production of electronic components, switched gears and focused on higher value design and research.

Like what the United States has done, Taiwan has outsourced most, if not all, of its manufacturing requirements to China but has retained the intellectual property, particularly design and innovation, in Taiwanese hands.

This could be the reason, Shih said, why Acer’s plant in Subic (renamed Wistron after it was spun off as an original device manufacturer) has yet to achieve outstanding growth although the factory is "doing well."

Shih, however, noted that although China is home to Acer’s biggest manufacturing centers courtesy of Wistron, its market penetration in the mainland is the lowest worldwide. He said this remains a puzzle for the company despite being the third largest computer maker in the globe after HP and Dell.

A major part of the success of Acer, he said, is the global nature of the company. "In every country where we operate, the management staff is composed of local people. That’s the case in the Philippines." The company’s president, in fact, is Gianfranco Lanci, an Italian.

This localization approach has worked superbly in Europe and in the United States, he said. "At the start, we had a disadvantage because we were viewed as an outsider. But because we have a very strong management team, we were able to pull through."

Aside from localization, Shih stressed it is important to decipher the next technology trend and, once identified, to make sure it is implemented in the company’s strategy.

This is what Acer realized when it bought the mobile PC of division of Texas Instruments in 1997 after sensing that laptops and notebooks were becoming popular. True enough, this forward-looking outlook proved prophetic as laptops soon outsold desktops in the market.

According to Acer Philippines general manager Manuel Wong, the company is preparing to launch a product that would address another trend — the emergence solid state drive-based laptops triggered by Eee PC of fellow Taiwanese firm Asustek.

Wong said business has been brisk in the country, with the company posting its sixth consecutive quarter growth in Q4 of 2007.