Peter Chou is no longer with HTC. The company has announced that Chou is still considered an honored advisor at HTC, but he has been employed as an executive director at Digital Domain since September of 2015.
For those who don’t recall, Peter Chou handed over his CEO title at HTC to Chairwoman Cher Wang back in March of last year. At the time, Chou was given a position within the company to head the HTC Future Product Development Lab. Since Chou is an engineer at heart, developing new products which would help HTC’s stabilization and future growth seems like a perfect fit for Chou. In late August of 2015, Digital Domains announced that Peter Chou was
In late August of 2015, Digital Domains announced that Peter Chou was joining the company as an executive director, but the move initially appeared to be a strategic partnership between HTC and Digital Domain since HTC was stepping into the virtual reality space with the HTC Vive. Having Peter Chou connected with the digital production studio responsible for the special effects in most of Hollywood’s top-grossing blockbuster movies would be an incredible asset for HTC.
Unfortunately, we now know that this was a permanent move for Chou. While HTC claims that he is still an advisor or consultant, there’s very little chance that we’ll be seeing the Peter Chou name mentioned by HTC going forward. With Chou’s leadership, HTC grew to be the largest smartphone manufacturer on the planet. But the company failed to adapt as Samsung marketing onslaught which forced HTC to the sidelines. We’re still hopeful that there’s a bright future for HTC in the smartphone industry, but there are still a lot of changes that need to happen if the company wants to be competitive in a time when you can buy flagship-tier smartphones for $400.
