Cher Wang, HTC's Chairman and co-founder, has replaced Peter Chou as the company CEO, HTC has announced.
Chou, who co-founded the company with Wang in 1997, will now focus on product development as Head of HTC Future Development Lab. According to HTC, Wang has been slowly transitioning into the new role over the last two years.
“We are seeing rapid changes in the industry, with the smartphone as our personal hub connecting us to a growing world of smart devices. We pioneered the smartphone industry; now we are applying that thinking to realize the potential of a new generation of connected products and services,” said Wang in a statement.
The news comes after a rough couple of years for HTC. The company reported its first quarterly loss in 2013, after the its One smartphone sales failed to meet expectations, and it never fully recovered.
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March, HTC unveiled a new flagship smartphone, the HTC One M9, as well as an ambitious virtual reality headset, the HTC Re Vive, which is slated to hit the market in late 2015.