Acer played down speculation that it is looking to tie-up with ailing smartphone maker HTC, according to DigiTimes.

Apparently, Stan Shih, chairman of Acer, had denied that a link-up with its troubled Taiwanese counterpart is on the cards, as it focuses on its own turnaround strategy.

Speculation about the future of HTC has been growing, following a continued poor financial performance for the company.

The company has seen its sales and profit fall in 2013, as it struggled to gain headway against rivals such as Samsung, Sony and LG Electronics in the premium Android space, and a raft of competitors in the mid-tier.

Acer, meanwhile, has been building up its own smart device portfolio, although this has not offset shrinkage in its core computer operations.

According to Bloomberg, Jason Chen, newly installed CEO of Acer, said the company needs to “dig ourselves out of a hole”, having been hit especially hard by the slowdown in the PC market.

He also said that the company had suffered from investing too early in some products – such as ultrabooks and touch-screen computers – before the market was ready.

Late last year, Acer announced what it described as “a significant change in the approach the company will be taking to the ICT industry”, centred on a transition from being a hardware company into a “hardware + software + services” player.

At the centre of this is its “Build Your Own Cloud” concept.

“This means that Acer will in the future provide software and services to consumers and enable them to build their own cloud on their devices, such as music, photos and other types of clouds. These self-built clouds, based on an Acer Open Platform, are reliable, easy to use and can be shared anytime, anywhere,” the company said.