One of the people responsible for the growth of HTC in the smartphone market has decided to part ways with the company.
According to a story at Boy Genius Report, Horace Luke, the Chief Innovation Officer, has now left HTC. The official statement says simply that Luke left "for personal reasons". However, the company was also quick to praise Luke"s accomplishments at HTC, saying that "Horace nurtured a culture of innovation at HTC and instilled a strong consumer design-focus among our employees who continue to raise the bar in designing products that capture our customers’ imagination." HTC also announced that Scott Croyle, the company"s vice president of design, will be taking on Luke"s duties.
Previous to joining HTC in 2009, Luke worked for nine years at Microsoft where he worked on a variety of projects including Windows XP, the Xbox division, Windows Mobile and more. He came to HTC in 2006 and helped to make the smartphone maker a major force in the market. Even before Luke joined the company HTC created the worlds first phone with a version of the Windows Mobile operating system inside.
Since he came to the company, HTC has released a number of smart phones that have used Windows Phone. It is also the first company to create a phone with Google"s Android operating system onboard (the HTC Dream, also known as the T-Mobile G1) back in 2008. Since then the company has released a large number of Android based phones for a variety of wireless carriers.