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The encyclopedia · People & Management · People decision · 2015

HTC replaced CEO Peter Chou after the One M9 failed to impress

A decade-long CEO was moved aside weeks before the One M9 launch, as HTC's smartphone business kept losing ground.

HTC · 2015-03-20

What happened

Peter Chou had led HTC since 2004, steering it from contract manufacturer to early Android pioneer. By 2013, however, the company was struggling to compete with Samsung and Apple, and board chair Cher Wang began taking on more operational responsibilities.

In March 2015, weeks before the launch of the One M9, HTC announced that Chou would step down as CEO and lead a new Future Development Lab, while Wang became CEO. The move followed poor reviews of the One M9 and several quarters of declining revenue and profit.

The leadership change did not reverse HTC's smartphone decline. The case is often used as an example of a board waiting too long to replace a product-focused founder with a commercially oriented leader in a maturing market.

Why it happened

  • The board allowed a product-centric founder to remain CEO for years while the company's commercial position deteriorated.
  • The CEO transition was timed to a flagship launch, creating uncertainty around a critical product cycle.
  • HTC lacked a clear succession plan that could have handed control earlier.
  • The move treated the symptom — leadership — without fixing the underlying brand and distribution weaknesses.
What it costsmartphone decline; market-share loss; exit from phonescostly

The lesson

In a maturing market, a founder's product genius is not enough — the CEO must also win on distribution, brand and operations, and the board must act before the decline becomes irreversible.

Aftermath

HTC continued to shrink its smartphone business and later pivoted to VR and blockchain phones. Peter Chou left the company entirely in 2016.

Sources

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