HTC Had Its Biggest Drop In Sales In More Than Two Years (bgr.com)

HTC has been struggling to stay competitive for years now with its Android handsets and virtual-reality headsets, and it still can't seem to get any relief. As BGR reports, the latest ominous headline points to a nearly 68-percent sales slump in June, marking HTC's worst results in more than two years. From the report: Even beyond all that, the company has had a tough go of it lately. There have been a few rounds off layoffs this year alone, the most recent being the company's culling of 1,500 workers from its Taiwan manufacturing division. After HTC president of smartphone and connected devices Chialin Chang resigned in February, the company also gave pink slips to several U.S. workers in the wake of combining its smartphone and VR units. Those 1,500 workers being axed, it also should be noted, comprise almost a quarter of the company's worldwide workforce.

Reuters on Friday quoted an unnamed analyst at market research firm Trendforce who puts the blame for some of this at HTC's feet partly as a result of unexciting products. "In the high-end segment, the sales of their flagship phone this year has been lower than expected, leading to lower market share," the analyst notes. "As for HTC's middle-end and entry-level series, the new models feature neither new specs nor high performance-price ratio, influencing the sales."

Comments

Then release a phone people want

[xack]

Removable battery and sd card, unlocked bootloader several years of updates headphone jack and no notch. Is that so hard for phone companies to make?

Re:Then release a phone people want

[Luckyo]

Very few people want that. Focusing on them over the wide audience is how you go bankrupt.

Sad but true.

Re:Then release a phone people want

[williamyf]

Very few people want that. Focusing on them over the wide audience is how you go bankrupt.

Sad but true.

Luckyo, I think you are wrong, and maybe xack is into something. Is true that the wider audience does not want the thicker not shinny phone combo, but with a 68% sales slump, maybe the (diminished*) HTC phone division may be better financially by forgeting about blockbuster Flagship Uber-Phones that appeal to the wide market, and focus on a niche instead.

Look at Blackberry Mobile (a completely different company from Blackberry propper) focusing on the Keyboard phone niche, or bullit (a british company licensing the CAT brand) focusing on HyperRugged phones. Maybe HTC could be the king of DualSim+MicroSD card at the same time + 3.5mm Jack + Remomable battery + 36 hour battery time niche. It will not restore their former smartphone glory, but at least, the phone division will not bleed cash.

Food for tought.

* Diminished because many of the top smartphone engineering talent went to Google a little while ago.

Re: Then release a phone people want

[Dixie_Flatline]

Why would you think that is the phone people want when Apple has 3 of the top 10 selling phones and one of them literally has none of the things you mentioned?

You just described the phone you want, and somehow that counts as an expert opinion on what the market wants more broadly? Back up your claim.

Re:Then release a phone people want

[dohzer]

Main desire: no bloat.

Re:Then release a phone people want

[Luckyo]

Or it will bleed even more as it will lose the "thin phone" crowd entirely, all while not being able to sell you a new phone every couple of years because you can just pop a new battery into it instead and keep using it.

Remember that laws of supply and demand are moderated not just by positive impulses, but by negative ones as well. Built in battery for example is a great example of a negative impulse that improves the demand.

Re:Then release a phone people want

[Anne Thwacks]

Very few people want that.

That is not true. Very few people KNOW that is how the thing they want is described.

A certain number of people want iPhones* because of the reality distortion field, and clearly that includes the CxOs of a large number of Android manufacturers.

* iPhones are the ones with broken screens and flat batteries, which their owners cant afford to replace because they spent their entire worldly wealth on buying the POS in the first place.

Re: Then release a phone people want

[CoolDiscoRex]

People. Real people. Non-Geeks, have grown tired of crapware. Killing battery life, sapping performance. Regular, everyday people hate it.

We live in a world where we tell the top 10-20% IQ'ed people that we don't care what they want. That they will get what the bottom 80% will accept, and they'll like it. We get people championing the decision.

Cater to the masses, forget those demanding people who probably work in the industries that make the technology that the 80% uses.

I'm sure it'll be fine.

Re:Then release a phone people want

[Anonymous Coward]

Welp, I guess they're going bankrupt then. No reason to try anything different!

Right off the cliff! Don't change direction.

Re: Then release a phone people want

[Luckyo]

Put your money were your mouth is and start up a company that does that. 10-20% of the most expensive part of the smartphone market would be huge piece to grab.

Re:Then release a phone people want

[Luckyo]

Problem being that "eventually" is significantly longer than two years.

Havnt had an HTC since the dream.

[BrookHarty]

I jumped on the HTC G1 Dream and modded it for years, but HTC never stood out for over the years. I never see an HTC flagship phone that wins on price or an stand out feature. Note was the big screen and pen, LG V series had a headphone dac and best noise canceling recording. Other won on price.

Essential was a neat idea, but way overpriced for the time.

I just cant remember when HTC had a flagship or price point to compare against any other phone. I dont even remember hearing about HTC phones for years.

Phone sales plummeting, not Vives

[cirby]

They're apparently selling quite a few Vives. They're keeping up with a fairly rapidly expanding market, at least.

Re:Phone sales plummeting, not Vives

[Desler]

Sony's PS4 VR outsells the Vive by more than a 3 to 1 margin and even then that's only with Sony selling around 2 million units so far this year and barely over a million last year.

Re:Phone sales plummeting, not Vives

[Desler]

Sony's product is a third of the price

PS4VR bundle has a list price of $370. The HTC Vive VR bundle goes for a list price of $499. You seem to use a different set of math than the rest of the world since $370 is not 1/3rd the price of $499. Even at the discounted $300 that you can buy the PS4VR system for at places like Walmart, the PS4VR bundle is still 60% the price of a Vive not the 1/3rd you claim. To find these prices only took me 2 minutes to find and had you done so you wouldn't look like such an idiot.

Re:Phone sales plummeting, not Vives

[Desler]

And just so you know where I got my figures:

PS4VR Bundle
HTC Vive Bundle

Re:Phone sales plummeting, not Vives

[Desler]

And also before you try to go "but the HTC Vive used to be more expensive!!" that may have been true, but the consumer price at launch was $799 which is still not 3 times to price of even the most discounted price of the PS4VR.

Google "bought" HTC's design staff

[Streetlight]

Seems like one also needs a design/engineering staff to design phones. See: https://www.theverge.com/2018/...

Perhaps they should update their phones software

[dstyle5]

I bought a HTC U11 last Nov, got it right after they released the Oreo update. Cool I thought, HTC seems to be on the ball with software updates. Unfortunately that was the last software update my phone has received. Still rocking the Dec 2017 security updates, thanks HTC!!! The phone itself is pretty good, such a waste that they aren't supporting it all, other than updating some of their apps.

As they don't seem to care about customer security, not a big surprise the U12+ is selling poorly. They dug their own grave, time to lie in it HTC. Should've sold your entire phone div to Google, although maybe they didn't want it all. Hmmm.

Last 4 phones were HTC

[jfdavis668]

I am still a fan. I tried other brands, and they are just the wrong size and the software sucks. Not a fan of the new squeeze side phones, so HTC may be losing me soon. It's a shame.

Isn't that just the Moto G5?

[rsilvergun]

not sure about the years of updates but hey, unlocked bootloader, so do you're own updates. The G5 isn't selling badly, but it's not exactly an iPhone 5/6 style hot commodity.

Beware cheap-shit chinese smartphones

[rojash]

Spyware galore

Brand dilution.

[Qbertino]

HTC used to make the best smartphones available. The HTC Desire was at least two generations ahead of everything else including iPhones. The HTC flyer was just as much the pinnacle of tablets, making the iPad look like the cheap knock-off. Awesome devices, showing everyone where things were headed.

Then HTC started bloating their lineup with countless variants of half-assed devices to the point where even the most enthusiastic completely lost oversight of where HTC was heading, what they actually had to offer and what their value proposition was. They returned from "quietly brilliant" to noisily mediocre, sub-par, aim and visionless.

Brand dilution destroyed HTC. Today it's a joke, soon to be sold off to some off-brand gravedigger and corporate waste recycler. It's a shame really. I really liked their products and was a bit of a fan.

Someone at HTC should've read "The 22 immutable laws of marketing".
It's probably too late now.

My 2 Eurocents.

HTC One MAX

[hduff]

When they release an updated version of this, I will return to HTC. That was the best damn phone I have ever had.

I was disappointed in my M8

[rickb928]

Just not much better than the M7 it replaced, and battery life sucked after two years. Replaceable batteries are just not important enough to drive design changes.

My U11 us a genuine disappointment. Touch problems, needs rebooting regularly now to make some apps work, flaky WiFi login app, fragile glass. I'm not even bothering to get the glass replaced, word is they can't, no supply of parts. Two month waits ending with returns unrepaired.

I have purchased my last HTC phone, breaking the string that went from the G1 to the Sensation 4G, M7, M8, and now the underwhelming U11. No idea what I will buy next...

Re:Perhaps they should update their phones softwar

[dstyle5]

Yes, nerds and geeks do complain about "support" because we know that having insecure devices/operating systems is what leads to you getting pwned. Your friends say they have no problems, but how do they know if their devices have malware on them? Oh that's right, they don't.

I would never do anything like banking on my phone as it just isn't worth the risk. Some malware could silently be logging your info, login credentials, etc then one day oops, your bank account is empty. Yup, sure was worth using that insecure phone from 5 years ago. That being said Android-based phone companies should support phones longer than 2 years, or 6 months in HTC's case. At least Google upped their supported releases to 3 years last year.