It doesn’t look good for HTC does it? The Taiwanese smartphone maker has seen sales and revenue fall and its slipping share price has caused it to fall out of the main index of Taiwan’s 50 largest firms. HTC’s market capitalisation is currently lower than its cash deposits which may cause its share price to drop even further as investors are reluctant to hold shares.
The ailing company is out of the TSWE 50 and will instead be listed in the smaller Mid-Cap 100 Index.
HTC reported in June that its second-quarter revenues had halved from the same period last year, translating to an operating loss of US$155m.
To ease its financial woes, it has decided to sell its Shanghai-based factory. It has already announced that it would cut 15% of its global workforce.
The current flagship One M9 has not been doing well in sales. In fact, HTC has experienced lacklustre sales even with its predecessor the M8. Despite receiving critical acclaim and accolades, it hasn’t quite translated into dollars for the troubled smartphone maker.
HTC has found it hard to compete in the high-end smartphone market, dominated by Apple and Samsung. It neither has the marketing muscle nor the brand presence of the two big boys. On the mid and lower end of the spectrum, it gets outgunned by the Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo.
But of course, it isn’t just about HTC, the one company. The mobile device business is an unforgiving one. We’ve seen giants fall – the Blackberries and Nokias of the world. Who’s to say who will be next in line.
You can’t blame HTC for not churning out products, though, because it has. As it expands its mobile line-up with more iterations of Ones and Desire variants, it has made efforts to explore other possibilities. It has diversified its product portfolio with the Re camera, Grip fitness tracker, active earphones and upcoming Vive VR headset.
The market climate is challenging, but let’s hope HTC can ride the storm and eventually pick itself. For a company that gave us the first ever Android smartphone and subsequent beautiful phones like the One M7 and One M8, this really isn’t where it should be.
