In 2010, Taiwanese tech company, HTC was the talk of the tech world. The emerging tech company made a huge splash in 2010 when it began selling smart phones. HTC sold over 24 million handsets in 2010, which was a 110% increase from the year before. In 2011, HTC continued its success while being named GSM’s Device Manufacturer of the Year and buying 51% of Beats Electronics. Since 2011, the company has earned critical acclaim with the HTC One, designed Google’s Nexus 9 tablet and watched its sales climb as high as $22 billion. However, HTC has struggled a bit lately. In March, reports surfaced that HTC lost over $330 in the final quarter of 2017. Currently HTC holds just 0.3% market share when it held as much as 10% back in 2011. To cut its loses, HTC agreed to a $1.1 billion deal that shifted 2,000 of their engineers and technical staff to Google. Today, HTC announced that it would have cut more of its workforce.
HTC has officially laid off 1,500 of its staff. In a statement released earlier today, an HTC spokesperson explained the decision by saying, “HTC continues to review its operations to ensure production resources align with key strategic initiatives, so that the company can more effectively compete in its target markets while maintaining its innovative edge.” Tuong Nguyen explained HTC’s summed up their fall from grace by saying, “They are not a significant contender within the smartphone space.”
While the company is going through a bit of a rough patch, HTC has shifted its focus to slowly emerging market of virtual reality.
