HTC’s CEO Peter Chou has been replaced by the company’s co-founder and chairwoman Cher Wang. 

Chou, however, will not be leaving the company, and instead will be heading HTC’s Future Development Lab, which will be responsible for new and upcoming products of the company.

Chou co-founded HTC along with Cher Wang in 1997. He became the company’s CEO in 2004. Under this leadership, the Taiwanese company grew from being just a contract smartphone maker for other companies to one of the leading smartphones brand in the world.

However, things have not been so great at HTC over the last 3 years under Chou’s leadership. The company’s marketshare has fallen drastically due to heavy competition from Samsung in the high-end and Chinese OEMs like Xiaomi and Lenovo in the lower-end.

Cher Wang returned to HTC a couple of years ago to handle marketing and sales.

Peter Chou’s departure comes at a point when the company is gearing up to release its flagship handset for 2015 — the HTC One M9.