HTC Corp (宏達電) chief executive officer Peter Chou (周永明) has transferred some of his duties to the company’s chairwoman in a move to focus on product development, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
“I took on too many things. I need to be more focused on innovation and [HTC’s] product portfolio,” Chou (周永明) said in an interview with the British newspaper on Sunday.
HTC chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅) will temporarily take over some operational duties, including sales, marketing and supplier relationships, he said.
Chou, who has come under pressure due to falling sales in the past few quarters, said there will be “a good result next year,” the newspaper reported.
Last quarter, HTC reported its first quarterly loss since going public in 2002, incurring a net loss of NT$2.97 billion (US$101 million), or NT$3.58 per share.
HTC shares dropped 1.88 percent to NT$130.5 yesterday. The stock has lost more than 56 percent of its value this year.
The company’s hopes seem to be riding on its newer models, including its flagship HTC One and the brand-new 5.9-inch One Max, although analysts remain convinced that HTC will stay in the red for the next two quarters due to fierce competition in the smartphone sector.
The Taoyuan-based company’s share of the global market slid from a peak of 10.3 percent in the third quarter of 2011 to just 2.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, data from Gartner Inc showed.
HTC and Facebook Inc unveiled a smartphone called the HTC First in April in the US that came with the social networking site’s Home app, but the phone’s sales have failed to live up to expectations.
However, Chou is confident that HTC will grab a 15 percent share of the high-end smartphone segment and a 5 percent share of the global market, he told the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, HTC yesterday declined to comment on a local media report that it has been listed as one of the manufacturers of Google Inc’s next-generation Nexus tablet computer.
Google is expected to choose its new manufacturing partner in December from among three companies: LG Electronics Inc, Taiwan’s Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) and HTC, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported, citing anonymous industry sources.
The Financial Times reported last week that HTC is developing a smartphone for Amazon.com Inc, but HTC also declined to comment on that report.
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