HTC has announced the appointment of Yves Maitre as its new CEO. Maitre, a former exec at French telecom Orange, says he will continue to grow the future of both 5G and XR as the company’s leader.
Cher Wang, who took over as company CEO in March 2015, is stepping down to continue as Chairwoman of the HTC board. HTC says she will focus on future technologies that both align with the company’s portfolio and vision of Vive Reality.
At Orange, Yves served as EVP of consumer equipment and partnerships, overseeing Orange’s connected technology strategy and business.
“Across the world, HTC is recognized for its firsts across the mobile and XR space. I am incredibly energized to grow the future of both 5G and XR alongside HTC employees, customers and investors,” said Maitre. “We will set out immediately to continue the transition from building the worlds’ best consumer hardware to also building complete services around them to make them easy to manage and deploy.”
Maitre has held senior executive positions at Orange for over 14 years, most recently as EVP of consumer equipment and partnerships. Prior to Orange, Yves spent six years working for consumer electronics company Thomson Multimedia where he served in senior positions in the US and Singapore.
“When I took over as CEO four years ago, I set out to reinvent HTC as a complete ecosystem company and lay the foundations for the company to flourish across 5G and XR,” said Wang. “So, now is the perfect time to hand over the stewardship of HTC to a strong leader to guide us on the next stage of our journey.”
Early last year HTC sold off much of its smartphone team to Google in a $1.1 billion deal, which saw half of HTC’s smartphone R&D division transferred to Google.
Amidst the subsequent 2018 step-down by the company’s president of smartphone and connected devices business, Chialin Chang, HTC tactically merged its smartphone and VR divisions. Since then, the company has launched PC VR headsets Vive Pro and Vive Pro Eye, and mobile VR headsets Vive Focus and Vive Focus Plus. It’s latest upcoming headset is Vive Cosmos, which is slated to launch on October 3rd, 2019.
HTC has also put an increasing investment into its digital distribution platform, Viveport, and opening it to Oculus Rift, Valve Index, and Windows VR headsets in addition to its own Vive products.