I posted this in another site earlier today. A half a dozen American users talked about how much they loved their HTC phones, even if thy only owned one.
Best phone nobody buy.
Taiwanese companies have the worst time with brand name recognition.
Blame Cher Wang, the owner.
She took her VIA company (IC design; chipset) to compete head-to-head with Intel a decade ago or more ago and its share prices went over NT$1000. Now at around NT$50.
She then took HTC to compete in the smartphone market and its share prices went over NT$1200 (higher maybe?) about 8 years ago or so. Also, now around NT$50.
No one ever talks about her crappe management and her deals in China.
SShhhhhhh…
They were good in the early days of Android. I loved my Incredible S (it still works, too). They mostly made solid, reliable phones–but nobody wanted/wants that. They tried to get experimental, and that had reviewers and customers scratching their heads. The 10 and U11 were a return to form, but the U12+ just isn’t cutting it in the reviews. I think there is a market for reliable, well-built phones–just not a large market.
Some would argue they’re not well-built, especially the U11 bending nightmare as documented on jerry rig everything youtube channel. Even the U12+ didn’t do well as bending it destroys the water-proofing adhesive - there goes the IP rating. As for reliability, plenty of other brands just as reliable if not more.
Translated for them for many years, helped me to buy an apartment. They were quite ahead of their competition in the beginning of smartphone if I remember correctly.
Great brand. I owned a couple of HTC phones and had bought some for relatives too.
Sad to see they going…
It’s not about the phones, it’s about the games you can play on it, the selfies you can make every ten seconds (camera is very important), and probably the looks of it, very thin, enormous screen and you need to carry a huge back-up battery pack get through the day.
Probably for many it’s about price too, and the best phone marketeer wins.
What did she do in China? and why is it HTC and other Taiwan brands aren’t big in China?
Yeah, especially when Ma became president, there was great hype on how Taiwan companies would go into PRC and make a killing. Aside from instant noodles and a few other things, it just hasn’t happened. And the successful examples happened way before Ma.
I can understand. Nothing good really came out of the Ma period other than direct flights. But what exactly did Cher try to do in China?
Their flagship phones are well-built in the conventional sense. I haven’t ever tried bending a phone, though. Even the guys doing it with the iPhones were silly.
The U11 is glass, so that’s less sturdy than a metal one. Just don’t give it to a kid to play with. Otherwise, it should stand up to normal use. HTC may have its issues, but their flagships last.
Their cameras were way better than Apples and Samsung’s, the industry leaders.
They had like the best engineered phone award just three years ago, and still failed to capture market share.
They were bad phone marketeers, targeted the wrong audience. As said didn’t do shit about real branding. They bought ‘Beats’ Dr. Dre and didn’t make anything off it.
I fancy myself a bit of a tech enthusiast, and I like to get a new flagship from various companies every year even if mine is still working as I like the feel and look of new tech. I had HTC in the previous years (desire and touch)
Over the years many bloggers and commentators blamed HTC’s woes on its lack of advertising, pointing to the fact that Samsung and Apple are pretty much the only 2 choices in the USA due to advertising budgets.
I think that is only a small part of the issue.
First look at OnePlus, a subsiderary of OPPO. They at first pretended to be a small scrappy upstart. The Oneplus One required you to get an invite from a long wait-list and various contents were held for people to win one. Very little advertising budget needed, and while many people complained about their shady practices, they became well known (no such thing as bad publicity, right?)
For the oneplus 2 you had greater availability but a long wait list.
Something about wait-lists is interesting, when you make people wait, they feel the product is worth more.
Oneplus 3 went up in price significantly but now they had hundreds of thousands of sheep, i mean people, on wait-lists to buy the product.
Now they are at OnePlus 6 and the name Oneplus is quite well known, due to word of mouth. Required little advertising budget.
What did HTC do? No promotional activities, overpriced phones (why would i buy htc over a similarly priced apple or Samsung?) removed useful features (one of the first to seal the battery, headphone jack now removed, crappier screens, poor quality assurance) and just refused to listen to what the customers demanded of them. All they had to do was go onto any blog and read the reviews and comments. I put LG in the same category now.
You would think after year after year of failures, someone would get the hint that what they are selling isn’t what people are buying. But year after year the same crap got pushed out.
Im sad we are losing a competitor but everyone saw this coming years ago except htc themselves.
HTC once had 10% share of the entire smartphone market globally. As you point out, they mainly have themselves to blame for their slide. LG & Sony’s smartphone divisions are also in serious trouble now but unlike HTC, those 2 have other profitable divisions so they can keep sustaining smartphone losses if they want to. Of the 3, HTC will likely be the first to exit the smartphone business and maybe cease to exist entirely as a company.
The newer generation of entrepreneurs likes to take a company, drive up the IPO…then profit from the crash. So there is really no incentive for sustained growth and continuity. It is quick cash and go. Stock market, not real market.
Add that an environment that kills creativity and experimentation and no trust in foreign assets to do marketing targeted to foreign markets -case in point, the HTC Robert Downing Jr. ad- and you have effectively a company strugling to stay afloat while being dragged by an anchor set in chains.
i knew someone who worked on their camera department. they thought the iphone camera was far better, and used an iphone themselves. they quit a couple years back and never really had anything good to say about htc. i did get to visit the building though, which was pretty cool.
the phone battle is what it is at this point. everybody is offering the same thing.
Yeah I think Sony and LG will be around for a long while, as they don’t really care so much if the line is profitable, I think for them it’s more than they can offer a more robust product line, even if that line is subsidized. Obviously they’d like profits but it’s not the main issue.
HTC only has one end game… phones and vr so they need to care more