Asia;BusinessWeek 50;Consumer Electronics;Executives;International;Technology;Telecommunications;Wireless;Internet;Computers Back to School for HTC CEO Amidst solid growth for the smartphone maker, and while attending a Harvard executive program, Peter Chou talks about his company's challenges Global Business BW 50 Asia High Tech Computer President and CEO Peter Chou, 49, is enjoying the good times. His company just reported a big jump in profits and sales, and HTC's stock price is up by more than 60% for the year compared with a Taiwan benchmark index that is almost flat. Now, Chou is taking a two-month leave to enroll in a program for executives at Harvard University. He recently spoke with <cite>BusinessWeek</cite> Asia technology correspondent Bruce Einhorn from Boston. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow. <BR /><BR /> <strong>What are you studying at Harvard?</strong><br /> It's an executive program at Harvard [that looks at] globalization, marketing, and corporate and business strategy. It will definitely help my systematic thinking, strategic thinking. It's a pretty good chance to learn from the best professors in the world. I think learning is important, especially when we are growing. We have to have the whole organization learning and growing together. <BR /><BR /> <strong>Who is minding the store while you're away?</strong><br /> Our COO is doing operations. I'm still having a lot of calls, e-mails with the team. I travel quite a bit [normally], so our team is quite experienced. <BR /><BR /> <strong>The smartphone sector is getting more crowded now. What do you think about the new competition?</strong><br /> Every company has challenges. We face the challenge like everybody else. Competition and changing markets, there always is this kind of challenge. We just need to make sure that we are doing a good job of always improving ourselves. <BR /><BR /> <strong>HTC is launching some new phones. What are they like?</strong><br /> We have a couple of products. We enhance the products in terms of aesthetics and technology. We're offering 3G devices, smaller designs, and we offer features like GPS, customized design. That kind of thing. <BR /><BR /> <strong>And you have something that offers "push" e-mail like that offered by BlackBerry. How can you compete against a product that has become so common?</strong><br /> BlackBerry's market size is actually small. It has good market share, but the market size today is pretty small. [Push e-mail] is very attractive to a lot of customers and to enterprises; a lot of operators are very, very interested in having this kind of capability. There is a huge market opportunity. <BR /><BR /> <strong>HTC has succeeded by producing for others, but now you have acquired Taiwanese company Dopod and have a brand name of your own. Why?</strong><br /> It's not a brand-new approach for us. But maybe for external people, they will try to think that this is very different. We have had the Qtek brand in the past in Europe. And now we migrate to the HTC brand so we can consolidate support to our customers. However, our priority of doing business with our operators is still the same and not changing. We are still supporting operator-branded products, which is not causing any conflicts in this area. <BR /><BR /> <strong>Not many Taiwanese companies have had success being an original design manufacturer (ODM) for others and also marketing brand names of their own. What makes you think HTC can pull this off?</strong><br /> That ODM formula doesn't fit to us. Since Day One, our business model has been quite different from ODM. We have our own value of innovation. We are the market leader; we are not a copycat. You cannot compare [us] with that kind of traditional ODM business model. The product category, the way we work, is also quite unique. We are the market leader in this segment; we created this market in this segment. <BR /><BR /> <strong>Lots of other Taiwanese manufacturers have not only shifted manufacturing to China but have also been moving R&D work there. Why haven't you done the same?</strong><br /> China is a very big market, and a very good market. However, our innovation, our design work is still focused on Taiwan. If there's a good opportunity, I don't want to limit ourselves, but I think that Taiwan is still our main strength. This [smartphone product] is not a commodity; this requires a lot of experience, a lot of value mentality. If we try to do as everybody, then we are just like everybody and we don't have any value. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2006/gb20060915_646348.htm http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2006/gb20060915_358630.htm,http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2006/gb20060915_126460.htm,http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2007/gb20070912_941801.htm False