Taipei, Feb. 2 (CNA) Taiwanese PC brand Acer Inc. on Thursday mourned the death of its former CEO Gianfranco Lanci, who passed away at the age of 68 as a result of complications following a recent spinal operation.

"We are saddened to hear of the passing of Gianfranco Lanci and wish to extend our condolences to his family," the company said.

Born in 1954 in Italy, Lanci graduated as a civil engineer from the Politecnico di Torino and worked for Texas Instruments, Acer and Lenovo in a career that spanned 40 years in the tech industry, according to a release Wednesday by the technology market analyst firm Canalys.

At Acer, he helped grow the notebook PC division, taking the company to market leadership in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in 2006, and was subsequently promoted to CEO in 2008, the report said.

In 2011, as the PC market faced its first severe downturn, Lanci resigned from Acer to join Lenovo, first as president of EMEA, before rising to become worldwide president and chief operating officer.

"In 2013, he took Lenovo to global PC market leadership, a position it retains today," it said, adding that he retired from the company in 2021.

According to American market information advisory firm Gartner, Acer shipped about 45.26 million PCs in 2010, which represented a growth of 13.8 percent from the previous year and accounted for about 12.9 percent of the worldwide market that year.

Lenovo's global PC shipments, meanwhile, reached 53.27 million in 2013, taking a global market share of 16.9 percent.