The current predicament of HTC, a company that has not achieved good results in sales of its smartphones for a long time. Today it struggles to survive in a market that is saturated and full of hundreds of mobile manufacturers - mostly Chinese - that offer incredible value for money like Xiaomi, for example.
The Taiwanese firm enjoyed very good popularity in past years, but this is not the case anymore. It is not as usual as before to see someone with an HTC terminal in their hands, despite the fact that there have been several launches of new models of the brand. The problem that has led the firm to this point, apparently, is due to a lack of innovation ... or at least that is what Yves Maitres, the new CEO, claims.
Maitres, in the interview that the portal did TechCrunch, has praised various phone companies in an interview a few days ago and criticized the performance and disdain of HTC in recent years. Of course, the latter has not been sought; Inadvertently, the company took a course from which it could not exit, despite the attempts it made to do so. Consumers loyal to this, over time, were switching to other more profitable brands with better offerings.
HTC has struggled to stay afloat during that time. In the second quarter of 2019, it posted a fifth consecutive quarterly loss. In addition, he had laid off a quarter of his staff last year. Talking about its market share, in the year 2011, HTC had a market share of around 11%, while in the current period its name remains hidden in the “others” section in most of the reports.
"HTC has stopped innovating smartphone hardware"said the executive. “And people like Apple, like Samsung and, more recently, Huawei, have done an incredible job investing in their hardware. We didn't, because we've been investing in virtual reality innovation. When I was young, someone told me: 'to be right at the wrong time is to be wrong and to be wrong at the right time is the right thing to do.' I think we were right at the wrong time and now we need to catch up. We made a timing mistake. It is very difficult to anticipate the time. HTC made a mistake in terms of timing. It's a difficult mistake and we are paying for it, but we still have so many assets in terms of innovation, equipment and balance sheets that I feel like we are recovering from the timing mistake.