Acer has issued a statement this morning reporting that Acer CEO J.T. Wang has resigned following news of the company's significant $446 million loss during the third quarter of 2013. Wang will continue in his role as Acer's chairman for another seven months, but he will be handing over the CEO reins to Acer President Jim Wong at the start of 2014.

Acer's financial beatdown was announced last Tuesday along with the rest of its Q3 results. It's the second quarter in a row of losses for the PC OEM; Q2 in August ended with a $11.4 million loss where many analysts had expected at least some profit. According to GigaOm, an additional (Chinese) statement issued by Acer blames "the gross margin impact of gearing up for the Windows 8.1 sell-in and the related management of inventory."

As Microsoft Editor Peter Bright showed yesterday, though, Windows 8.1 hasn't necessarily exploded out of the gate, and tying significant amounts of money up around the operating system's launch doesn't appear to have served Acer very well. Most OEMs see sales dips in Q2 and Q3 before the holiday-saddled Q4 pushes sales back up, but Acer's numbers paint a particularly dismal picture: the company saw a 35 percent drop in sales from the same quarter last year.

There are changes afoot, though. Acer announced at the same time that it will be cutting its global staff by 7 percent, which could result in around 600 employees getting their walking papers. The company estimates that this will save up to $100 million in 2014. However, the adage "you can't cut your way to growth" applies here: Acer will need to couple its reductions with products people actually are interested in buying (instead of things like this) in order to start posting profits.