Former HTC Corp (宏達電) North Asia president Jack Tong (董俊良) yesterday announced the establishment of a local virtual reality (VR) motion solutions start-up.
The announcement came just two days after HTC confirmed his departure.
In an invitation sent to the local media, Tong said that JPW International Technology Corp would unveil its latest motion solutions for VR technologies on Friday next week.
The announcement showed that former HTC North Asia chief marketing officer Eric Chen (陳良君) has joined JPW as a media relations official.
Tong had overseen HTC’s smartphone business since 2007 and helped expanding the company’s VR segment over the past two years.
HTC on Tuesday said Tong had resigned for “personal reasons.”
“Jack is a talented and experienced professional... We believe that he will continue to help build the VR ecosystem in the industry,” HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) said in a statement.
Tong was the third senior executive to quit HTC since the beginning of this year.
“It is not really a bad thing for HTC to lose top executives. Given the current economic scale of HTC, it does not need so many high-paid executives for its operations,” Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co (元大投顧) analyst Jeff Pu (蒲得宇) told the Taipei Times by telephone.
Not only would HTC save on costs, but Tong’s VR start-up could also benefit HTC by expanding the VR technologies ecosystem, Pu said.
HTC president of smartphone and connected devices business Chang Chia-lin (張嘉臨) in February told investors the firm would continue investing and recruiting professions to ensure the strength of its organizational structure.
HTC’s accumulative revenue dropped 1.96 percent year-on-year in the first quarter to NT$14.53 billion (US$481.92 million), a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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