A Royal VIA Wedding
Translated By Jason Chen
Date: August 6, 2003
Influential Taiwanese semiconductor provider VIA Technologies,
Inc. recently settled its longstanding legal feud with chip giant Intel.
The resolution of this high-profile skirmish changed the downward momentum of
VIA's business outlook. And now it appears that, for VIA, one item of good
news follows another.
VIA Chairman of the Board Cher Wong and VIA CEO Wen-Chi Chen are getting
married.
After going through all the good times and bad times together in the last few
years, the couple will be married under the roof of God. Their
relationship has become an inspiration to the IT industry.
CEO Wen-Chi Chen left Intel ten years ago to start his own company called
"Symphony." Unfortunately the company failed and he entered the lowest
point of his life. However, during his time with Symphony, the IT industry
in Taiwan had come to know Wen-Chi Chen as audacious and hard-working.
These two personality traits won the heart of Cher Wong, who was at the time
working as VP for motherboard maker FIC.
When Cher Wong decided to start a new company called VIA (with another prodigy,
Mr.Lin), she invited Wen-Chi Chen over to the startup. Wen-Chi's main
responsibility was to run the operation of the company in Taiwan, while Cher
Wong handled overseas marketing and sales.
Because Wen-Chi Chen is, by nature, not materialistic, he never claimed
ownership to either a car or a house after he moved back to Taiwan. Cher
Wong, logicially, invited Wen-Chi Chen to live in her own apartment complex.
And after work, Wen-Chi would frequently catch a ride back home with Cher.
In a key turning point in their lives, Cher Wong invited Wen-Chi Chen to a
Sunday Church Service, and they have both been devoted Christians ever since.
The couple not only shared the same passion for work, but whenever they had
free time available, they would wake up at dawn to worship and jog together.
These routines gave Wen-Chi Chen and Cher Wong the opportunity to get to know
one another better.
Under the guidance of Wen-Chi Chen and Cher Wong, VIA went public in 1999.
Immediately, VIA became a Wall Street darling. In 2000, only a year later,
in a story of "Little Shrimp vs. Whale" (a kind of Chinese version of "David vs.
Goliath"), they outmaneuvered Intel and shocked the whole PC industry. All
of this success caused VIA to jump into the forefront of the world's technology
stage.
However, when the Intel Pentium 4 came about, VIA was then again under Intel's
constant and fierce business attacks. Most of VIA's business allies and
partners began to leave, causing VIA's revenues and profits to go into a
downward spiral, even to a point of producing a rare blotch of red ink on the
company's books.
The story of VIA's quick rise to fame in 3 short years followed by the painful
period caused from the legal conflict with Intel is something only Cher Wong and
Wen-Chi Chen would fully understand.
But through their constant struggle at work, their relationship blossomed into something romantic. And today they will wed and become forever inseparable.
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