HTC’s smartphone president resigns, citing personal career plan

By Mark Jansen February 15, 2018

HTC U Ultra — Kyle Wiggers/Digital Trends

Kyle Wiggers/Digital Trends

HTC’s President of Smartphone and Connected Devices Business, Chialin Chang, has resigned from his post, according to an announcement on HTC’s investor portal.

The Taiwanese company issued a statement to Engadget, thanking Chang for his service and wishing him the best in his future endeavors.

“We can confirm Chialin Chang has resigned from his position as President of the Smartphone and Connected Devices Business at HTC,” the statement read. “We thank him for his dedication to the company for the last six years and wish him well in his future endeavors.”

According to reports from Apple Daily and UDN, Chang chose to leave the company in order to further his personal career plan, and plans to set up an AI-based company in the near-future. While no mention was made of HTC’s recently poor performance in the mobile marketplace, this change at the top follows Google‘s completed sale acquiring a hefty section of HTC’s smartphone division for the princely sum of $1.1 billion. While HTC CEO Cher Wang assured the media the sale would not affect HTC’s ability to make its flagship U-series smartphones, Chang’s departure also comes after recent a earnings report highlighting significant losses for the company in the third quarter of 2017.

Google has relied on HTC to manufacture the original Pixel and Pixel XL, as well as the more recent Pixel 2. While the company’s flagship HTC U11 received rave reviews, Taiwanese analysis firm TrendForce reported HTC’s smartphone production dropped to under 10 million units in 2017.

With the future uncertain for HTC’s mobile division, this may only be the first of many changes for the Taiwanese company. We recently saw LG drop out of the heavily competitive Chinese market, and it could be that HTC may too have to pick its battlegrounds very carefully in order to survive.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributor

Mark Jansen is an avid follower of everything that beeps, bloops, or makes pretty lights. He has a degree in Ancient &…

Mobile

HTC’s newest phone is a boring mid-ranger designed for the metaverse

HTC desire 22 pro in black

HTC has lifted the covers from the Desire 22 Pro, its latest smartphone that is equipped from top to bottom in metaverse functionalities (or so says HTC). HTC claims that the Desire 22 Pro can connect with its Vive Flow virtual reality glasses, allowing users to stream content from the phone’s screen to the wearable’s display. In doing so, users get to experience an expanded field of view equivalent to a 300-inch screen.

The latter is facilitated by a tech called HDCP, offering support for apps like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. However, it is unclear if the courtesy will be extended to graphics-intensive online games which consume a lot of network bandwidth, something that requires a fast wireless connection and a processor powerful enough to handle it. That seems unlikely for the HTC Desire 22 Pro, as the phone comes armed with Qualcomm’s mid-range Snapdragon 695 chipset.

Mobile

HTC created a metaverse smartphone, and it’s being announced on June 28

HTC U12 Plus Review

Not everyone remembers the last time they carried an HTC smartphone, as the brand has been overshadowed by Samsung, Google, and OnePlus. However, HTC is plotting an interesting comeback to the smartphone market with a new handset set to be announced on June 28.

HTC shared a tweet on Thursday, June 9, teasing a new phone dedicated to the metaverse — specifically, HTC's own "Viverse." The official teaser poster shows the shape of the phone with rings extending further back from the screen like eternal mirrors.

Mobile

How Google plans to improve video capturing on Snapchat, Instagram

OnePlus 10 Pro and Oppo Find X3 Pro camera app.

At Google I/O 2022, Google announced a host of new features that will improve how efficiently third-party apps such as Snapchat, Instagram, and others use the camera and video functions on Android smartphones. The tech giant is also making significant changes to the camera functionality on Android 13 to ensure the output images replicate the preview you see before capturing that image.

Google has a significant edge over competitors when it comes to computational photography. Besides leading with its Pixel line of smartphones that extensively use algorithmic enhancements to capture images with a quality that is often likened to professional cameras like DSLRs, Google, as the creator and sustainer of Android, also provides a standard suite of tools to allow seamless integration between software features and the camera hardware on a device.