Asus chief executive Jerry Shen, who has served in the role for more than a decade, is to leave the company with PC-focused S.Y. Hsu and customer service lead Samson Hu jointly taking over the role as of January next year.
Having been with the company for 25 years, Shen Zhenlai - also known by the anglicisation Jerry Shen - has served as the chief executive officer of Asus for the past eleven years, during which he has been credited as driving the company's push into mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. Now, though, he is leaving the company amid a refocusing that will see Asus shy away from mid-range and entry-level mobile devices sold under the ZenPhone brand and focus on higher-end devices like the recently-announced Republic of Gamers (ROG) Phone.
The departure was confirmed in a statement to Engadget China, one which has not yet made it to Asus' English-language press pages. In it, Shen's successors were named as Xu Xianyue and Hu Shubin - S.Y. Hsu and Samson Hu, in their anglicised forms - who will be best remembered for their work on the development of the original Eee PC family which effectively launched the short-lived netbook craze. Previously, the two had also worked together as temporary joint chief operating officers (COOs) in 2015.
The Asus board has positioned the executive shuffle as part of a push into higher-end mobile, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT), with a range of investments, mergers, and acquisitions to be announced over the next three years. Shen, meanwhile, is to run a start-up focused on exactly those topics, dubbed iFast, with Asus reportedly taking a 30 percent stake in the new company.
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