ASUS CEO Resigns – Will Focus More on Gamers and Power Users

ASUS announced yesterday that its CEO, Jerry Shen, would be resigning at the end of 2018. Jerry Shen was appointed as CEO in 2008 after the successful Eee PC project that he played a major role in. Once he was the CEO he helped develop the companies mobile strategy and oversaw the launch of the ZenFone series, PadFone series, Transformer series, ZenWatch series and the ZenBook series. That strategy seemed to be going well, but in recent years the smartphone market was dominated by Samsung, Huawei and Apple. ASUS isn’t exiting the smartphone market, but they have a plan to shift away from the entry-level and mainstream handset market and focus on premium devices. That shift means that ASUS will be taking one-time charge of NT$6.2 billion (~$201 million) to cover losses from this strategy shift.

Jonney Shih, ASUS Chairman, hinted in a recent interview that the company will go back to focusing on gamers and power users. ASUS appears to be zeroing in on the eSports market once again and that is fine with us.

Jerry Shen will still be around though as he announced that he will be chairman and CEO of iFast, an Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) startup that just happens to be 30-percent owned by ASUS.

Starting on January 1st, 2019, ASUS will be headed by two people in a co-CEO style format. Those two people would be S Y Hsu, who is currently heading up the companys PC business, and Samson Hu, who is leading global customer care services.