HTC CEO Yves Maitre Bows Out In Less Than A Year Due To Personal Matters

Once one of the kings of the mobile market, HTC has all but become a footnote in history even as it tries to make ends meet via its Vive VR business. Part of its plans to turn the ship around involving putting a new captain in the person of former Orange exec Yves Maitre. HTC's newly-minted CEO, however, has reportedly tendered his resignation but not due to any illness nor from how the company posted a 9th straight quarterly loss.Engadget reports that HTC's board has accepted Maitre's resignation and presented the cause as more of a personal family matter. Due to travel restrictions imposed to counter the COVID-19 pandemic, the chief exec has allegedly spent the last 11 months away from his family in Europe. Maitre took over the reins in September last year.

This news will naturally cause concerns about the company's ability to recover from its losses in the mobile market, a problem that Maitre has not yet been able to sufficiently address in his extremely short stint at CEO. He acknowledged that the company dropped the ball in innovation in the smartphone market and vowed to return to making premium phones again. That has not yet materialized either.

At the moment, HTC seems to stand on Vive, a relatively stronger brand in the VR market. There is still an ongoing debate, even until now, whether that market will endure the test of time, especially now that its honeymoon phase seems to be over.

HTC co-founder Cher Wang, who currently holds the board's chair, will again assume the role of CEO. There is no word yet if the company will immediately be searching for a new chief executive but that could be the least of its problems as it tries to battle the effects of COVID-19 in addition to the still-growing problems in mobile as well as Facebook's more aggressive push in the VR market.