It’s been a tough few years for HTC going from an 11 percent share of the global smartphone market to now just a blip in the ‘others’ category. At TechCrunch Disrupt the new HTC CEO, Yves Maitre, appeared on stage to discuss HTC and their missteps and struggles in the past eight years.
Mr Maitre was very open and honest, as you expect at an event such as TechCrunch Disrupt, opening up about their smartphone woes and how they are going to get their offerings on the right track:
HTC has stopped innovating in the hardware of the smartphone, and people like Apple, like Samsung and, most recently, Huawei, have done an incredible job investing in their hardware. We didn’t, because we have been investing in innovation on virtual reality.Yves Maitre, HTC CEO
The HTC CEO puts the entire misstep down to bad timing in that they were innovating in the right thing but at the wrong time — and now they have to play catch up with all those who have innovated the right thing at the right time. He said that HTC still has a lot of assets “in terms of innovation, team and balance sheets” and feels they are recovering from their mistakes.
He said that HTC will focus on “best in class hardware and photography”, focusing on countries “with higher GDP” and is something they hope to solve in the next few months — whether that means we will see a new HTC flagship next year is doubtful but you would hope they do something sooner rather than later. It will not be an easy road for HTC and he thinks the turn around will come when most carriers have fully rolled out their 5G networks –“2025”.
It will be interesting to see how HTC fare with this and we hope that they are successful because as consumers we need more players in the market to keep it moving forward. There is likely to be a big hole in the market while Huawei deal without any Google apps or services and could be the moment for HTC to rise from the ashes.
It will be tough for them to do given they sold a lot of their smartphone R&D team to Google a while back. Time will tell, hopefully sooner rather than later — who can wait until 2025 for that?
Not so sure that HTC should bother. HTC CEO has funded too many anti-LGBTQ hate groups. Unless it can manage to limp by on the homophobic customers alone, it’s not important.
You don’t always have to innovate. If you can create a great all rounder, and price it low enough – you can watch it sell
In this era when we have companies like Oneplus and Xiaomi which innovates and give us great smartphones at a lower price. I don’t think making an “all rounder” phone would be enough. Even sony still innovates with its 21:9 phones.
Another HTC fan boy here, owned all their flagships from the desire(first android for me) through to the U11 with a few lower range models in there as well I’ve moved on since then, I’ve given everyone a go not loyal to anyone else since(I change over every 6 months) I’d be happy to support them again, but they need to come back as if they were a new start up, offer mostly what the other flagships do but undercut them significantly on price It’s basically how every other brand built up until they got the market share and jacked… Read more »
I used to own HTC Touch pro and my dad used the 7500. Those really are great “phones”, it’s really sad looking at HTC right now. How they used to be the market leaders in the old windows mobile era and hasn’t been the same since they got into the Android market even though they have a great start in the few first years. I think their biggest mistake was associating their brand with the Beats since Beats has a really bad reputation in the audiophile community. I just hope that they can find their own uniqueness like any other… Read more »
I was a loyal HTC fan right from the dream with the m7 being my favorite. Then it kinda just fizzled.
HTC is what first got me into Android. It was miles ahead of anything. My first Android smartphone was the HTC Legend which was brilliant. I always wanted a HTC Desire too but ended going down the Nexus / Pixel path.
HTC need to get Telco’s to start carrying their handsets. My very first smartphone was a HTC (Desire) and would still support them if only I could get their handsets from a Telco and pay if off monthly rather than buying from an etailer and have to pay up front.