Cher Wang started her own multibillion-dollar company.

By LAURA M. HOLSON

CHER WANG

“I don’t need to be the center of attention.”

No one is ever going to call Cher Wang “poor little rich girl.’’

The daughter of one of the richest men in the world, she never made headlines as a profligate jet setter living off her father’s wealth.

Indeed, she rarely makes headlines at all, although she started her own multibillion-dollar company and made her own fortune.

Ms. Wang is one of the most powerful female executives in technology. The company she founded, the HTC Corporation, makes one out of every six smartphones sold in the United States, most of which are marketed under brands like Palm and Verizon.

In October the iPhone’s most likely rival, the T-Mobile G1, designed by HTC and powered by Google’s Android operating system, went on sale. The attention is something HTC has never sought. And the same can be said of Ms. Wang.

“I kind of like it that way,” she said in an interview recently at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated in 1981.
“I don’t need to be the center of attention.”

In her native Taiwan, though, where she is called Wang Hsiueh-Hong, Ms. Wang and her family are a technology dynasty. Her recently deceased father, Wang Yung-Ching, founded the plastics and petrochemicals conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group. According to Forbes magazine, he was the second richest man in Taiwan. Two of his daughters serve on Formosa’s executive team.

Another daughter, Charlene Wang, helped found First International Computer in 1980, a maker of motherboards. And Cher Wang is chairwoman of not one, but two companies: HTC and VIA Technologies, a developer of silicon chip technology, where her husband, Wen Chi Chen, has been chief executive since 1992.

Forbes estimates the couple’s wealth at $3.5 billion. But Ms.Wang said she was not defined by wealth.

“My family was very strict,”she said. Leisure time was spent playing tennis or basketball. And becoming a socialite was not an option.“My father thought we should experience different things.”

After graduating from Berkeley, she took a job in 1982 at First International Computer, where she sold motherboards and later oversaw the personal computer division.

When HTC was founded in 1997, the company made notebook computers. Her husband recalled that a few years after the company started, Ms.
Wang and her partners were forced to make a choice: focus on notebooks or shift gears to hand-held devices, a market that showed signs of promise. Ms. Wang urged they shift to cellphones.

“HTC had strong engineers developing notebooks,”Mr. Chen said.“But it was a volatile business with lots of competitors. She saw that clearly and pushed for the other instead.”

It was a smart decision. HTC’s revenue tallied about $1 billion in the most recent quarter, a 29 percent increase from a year earlier.

She keeps her life simple. On her 50th birthday in September, she stayed home and ate cake with her family. Despite her status as a member of technology’s billionaire club, she eschews being ferried by private jet. And instead of taking business associates out for a lavish dinner, she invites them to an early morning basketball game instead.

Faith plays an important part in her life. A Christian , she said she belongs to no denomination but attends church whenever she can. Spirituality informs how she lives.“I feel everyone has their own faults,”she said.“We have to understand why people are like that - is it the environment or the background.”But it informs her work, too.“Jesus also tells us you have to work hard, not be sluggish,” she said.