Ahead of a Disrupt look, Yves Maitre talks cellular, VR and blockchain
On September 17, HTC introduced that cofounder Cher Wang can be stepping down as CEO. In her place, Yves Maitre stepped into the position of Chief Executive, after greater than a decade at French telecom big, Orange.
It’s a tricky job at a good more durable time. The transfer comes on the tail of 5 consecutive quarterly losses and main layoffs, together with 1 / 4 of the corporate’s workers, which have been let go in July of final 12 months.
It’s a far fall for a corporation that comprised roughly 11 p.c of worldwide smartphone gross sales, some eight years in the past. These days, HTC is routinely relegated to the “other” column when these figures are printed.
All of this isn’t to say that the corporate doesn’t have some attention-grabbing irons within the fireplace. With Vive, HTC has demonstrated its potential to supply a leading edge VR platform, whereas Exodus has tapped into an curiosity in exploring using blockchain applied sciences for cellular units.
Of course, neither of those examples present any signal of displacing HTC’s once-booming cellular gadget gross sales. And this January’s $1.1 billion sale of a good portion of its {hardware} division to Google has left many questioning whether or not it has a lot gasoline left within the cellular tank.
With Wang initially scheduled to seem on stage at Disrupt this week, the corporate in the end opted to have Maitre sit in on the panel as a substitute. In preparation for the dialog, we sat down with the manager to debate his new position and way forward for the struggling Taiwanese {hardware} firm.
