TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwanese handset maker HTC announced executive personnel changes on March 20, former chief executive officer Peter Chou, who had been in the position for more than a decade, is now to head HTC’s Future Development Lab, while Chairperson and Co-Founder Cher Wang as its new Chief Executive Officer, the company said in a statement.
“ As the smartphone market becomes saturated, HTC needs to surpass the current situation by combining the applications of IoT, personal healthcare and education altogether is a clear goal.” Peter Chou said in a statement.
Meanwhile, these executive personnel changes are a move the market has long expected after HTC continued to see disappointing sales and market share over the past three years.
However, Peter Chou said that he will lead HTC’s Future Development Lab, eyeing on healthcare platform, and the virtual reality device HTC Vive, which is an upcoming virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD) being developed in co-production between HTC and Valve Corp. It is part of the RE series of products and also part of Valve Corp’s SteamVR project.
Peter Chou said in a statement, referring to HTC has done a good job at Mobile World Congress (MWC) with the launch of HTC One M9, HTC Vive, and HTC Grip, especially, Vive has drew a lot of attention on the spot.
Allegedly, Peter Chou convinced that HTC will do better in the year of 2015 in terms of new products of RE series, wearables, Internet of Things (IoT), and virtual reality that made him excited. On the other hand, he pointed out that he hoped to spend more time on establishing the Health Platform, virtual reality products, and other connected devices with cloud computing.
