Dark clouds seem to be hovering over HTC for the past few months as we hear constant news of old staff fleeing, following the disaster that hit the firm with failed sales of HTC One and HTC First phones. The Taiwanese company recently saw the departure of Lennard Hoornik, its former CEO of HTC Asia, who left the firm last week. Earlier also Jason Gordon, HTC’s Vice President of Global Communications and Kouji Kodera, Chief Product Officer were also in reports for leaving the firm. And now there’s buzz around the corner that Elizabeth Griffen, HTC’s Head of Global digital services also plans to leave HTC. The news is not really welcomed by the company as HTC had hopes pinned on recovering from losses with its HTC One and HTC First devices. What could have lead to the failure? Well there are certain factors including the manufacturing of phone to Facebook deciding to drop its homepage from HTC First that added fuel to the firm’s already existing problems. HTC’s manufacturing power isn’t as good as Apple and Samsung, who are currently the world’s leaders in smartphone devices and tablets. Both these firms have strong manufacturing chain to produce their own chips, processors and displays to meet strong demand in short time, which HTC lacks. The Android system HTC uses for its devices also doesn’t help the firm much as there are various cheap Android devices available. However, the fact that Samsung owns around 95 percent of the global Android market also makes HTC lose out on that facet. Hoping to gain some dominance in the market, the Taiwanese firm focused on the software of its HTC First, which apparently was the first smartphone to feature Facebook Home, but that too for less than a week. The disastrous sales, management layoffs, competition, production and supply problems could be catastrophic for the firm, until HTC addresses them. An effective solution is the need of the hour, which we hope the Taiwanese company implies soon.
