Ben Ho (何永生) yesterday formally stepped down as chief marketing officer of HTC Corp (宏達電), nearly three months after speculation about his resignation first emerged.
The Taiwanese smartphone maker confirmed Ho’s resignation in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, saying the company is in the process of appointing a replacement.
Ho, a Singaporean, joined HTC in January last year from Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (遠傳電信).
He reportedly tendered his resignation to chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) in July, Bloomberg reported earlier, citing people familiar with the matter.
While he orchestrated a series of marketing campaigns featuring Robert Downey Jr, the star of action movies like Iron Man and The Avengers, to promote the company’s flagship One-series smartphones, HTC continued to suffer declining market share amid persistent challenges in both the high-end and mid-end smartphone segments globally.
In the high-end segment, the company faces strong competition from Samsung Electronics Co, LG Electronics Co, Sony Corp and Apple Inc, as well as emerging rivalry from China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為), Citigroup Global Markets analyst Dennis Chan (詹宗勳) said last month in a client note.
HTC’s mid-end phones have become uncompetitive against Chinese makers such as Xiaomi Corp (小米), Coolpad (酷派) and Huawei, Chan said.
Chan forecast that HTC’s global smartphone market share would fall to 1.7 percent this year and to 1.2 percent next year, from 2.3 percent last year and 4.6 percent in 2012.
Ho’s resignation comes on the heels of the departures of several senior managers or executives over the past three years.
Last week, Leigh Momii, who had spent three-and-a-half years with HTC, left the Taiwanese company for Seattle-based Android software developer Cyanogen Inc, the state-run Central News Agency reported on Saturday.
Other former executives who have left the troubled handset maker include Lorain Wong (黃文采), who quit as head of public relations in October last year, and Paul Golden, a former executive of Samsung Electronics Co, who resigned as marketing adviser earlier this year.
HTC shares fell 1.14 percent to NT$130.5 yesterday in Taipei trading.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the