HTC appoints former Orange executive Yves Maitre as CEO

Taiwanese handset maker HTC on Tuesday announced the appointment of former Orange executive Yves Maitre as CEO effective immediately.

At Orange, one of the world's largest telecommunications firms, Maitre served as Executive Vice President (EVP) of Consumer Equipment and Partnerships, overseeing Orange's connected technology strategy and business.

"Across the world, HTC is recognised 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," Maitre said on his appointment.

"We will set out immediately to continue the transition from building the world's best consumer hardware to also building complete services around them to make them easy to manage and deploy," he added.

Maitre has held senior executive positions at Orange for over 14 years. Prior to joining Orange, he spent six years working for consumer electronics company Thomson Multimedia where he served in senior positions in the US and Singapore. He has also held roles across supply chain and product management.

Maitre replaces Cher Wang as HTC CEO. Wang will continue as Chairwoman of the HTC board, in which she will focus on future technologies, HTC said.

"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. 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," said Wang.

"I am truly delighted that Yves is taking the reins; he has a long association with our company, and he shares our passion for innovation. I firmly believe Yves is the right leader to continue to lead HTC to its full potential," she added.

HTC is reportedly mulling to make a comeback with new 4G smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 5G devices in 2020.

HTC will continue to strengthen its deployment in Taiwan's handset market with a more prudent positioning strategy as rival brands have been launching new models rampantly into the already crowded market, according to HTC Taiwan President Darren Chen, DigiTimes reported on Monday.

( With inputs from IANS )