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HTC moves aside CFO who oversaw $300 million Beats Audio deal (update)
HTC's CFO Winston Yung has been shunted into a 'corporate development' role after barely a year on the job. He orchestrated some pretty controversial deals during his tenure, including the $300 million purchase of the Beats Audio brand from Dr. Dre -- an acquisition that has so far shown little value except as a marketing device. Yung also occupied the hot seat while HTC's balance sheet suddenly flipped from brilliant to bad and then worse, and was outspoken in his views of what went wrong. HTC has provided no reason for the job shift, leaving analysts to guess at how the company's strategy will change to capitalize on its new One smartphones and battle against Sammy's imminent contender. The new CFO is Chia-Lin Chang, a former Goldman Sachs partner and Motorola engineer who hopefully knows how to handle pressure. Update: HTC's own CEO Peter Chou has taken time to respond to analyst reports. His quote follows: On Monday, HTC announced the appointment of Chia-Lin Chang as Chief Financial Officer withWinston Yung, his predecessor, transitioning to a corporate development role. "Media speculation that ties this announcement to HTC's partnership and investment in Beats By Dre is categorically inaccurate," said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. "HTC and Beats have made impressive progress in innovation and brand awareness and the integration of the Beats brand and technology in the new HTC One series is a clear indication of our commitment to this partnership."
HTC admits its bulky, quick-dying LTE phones kinda suck
After a long streak of skyrocketing earnings, HTC's climb towards the stars seems to have stalled. Q4 was not kind to the company and CFO Winston Yung thinks he knows the reason why. During the today's earnings call Yung admitted that HTC "dropped the ball" with its selection of LTE devices. He conceded that the bulky handsets simply failed on a design and spec level -- especially when it came to battery life -- and were not selling nearly as well as expected. Unsurprisingly, the company promises to turn its fortunes around with the next product cycle, which is rumored to kick off at MWC with the Ville.
HTC CFO says it's time to 'figure it out' with Apple
HTC's CFO Winston Yung appears ready to make a deal with market rival and patent nemesis Apple. The Taiwanese company has had some rather harsh words for the Cupertino crew, and it hasn't seemed any more conciliatory after getting slapped by the ITC. That may be starting to change, as Yung told Bloomberg, "we [Apple and HTC] have to sit down and figure it out." He went on to say that the house that Sense built was open to discussions with Jobs and co. but did not venture to guess what a final agreement might look like. Of course, it's worth pointing out that this is absolutely standard practice, and we'd expect nothing less. In fact, HTC really only has two options here: plead for licensing cooperation, or go into gummy bear sales.
