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HTC’s boss Peter Chou has sent out a memo to all 16,000 of his company’s staff, telling them not to listen to the doom-mongers running the company down and to get back to their innovative ways of old.
“We are a strong player in the market and we are just having short-term challenges” Chou said in the memo to his people, which also asked staff to “kill bureaucracy” and return to the fast-reacting habits that saw HTC rocket to the top of the smartphone world in the space of a few years.
“We agreed to do something, but we either didn’t do it, or executed it loosely,” the big boss admitted, advising HTC employees to ignore the “noises from the market and the industry” suggesting the Taiwanese giant is heading for the scrap heap in the face of furious competition from Samsung.
Although, most of the “noises” regarding HTC’s poor form have come from the company itself, which has issued some rather poor financial figures over recent months. [WSJ]
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I don’t see why their profits are down, their products are still fantastic and a bit cheaper than Samsung’s GS3. I’ve just bought myself a One X and my misses bought herself a One S as they’re great products.
Yes, I agree. My wife and I recently upgraded our phones and got the same One X/S combo – they’re great phones.
Compared to the GS3, I find the One X is just a much more attractive phone, both physically and in terms of user interface. I much prefer HTC Sense to the ugly and cluttered TouchWiz interface (or indeed the stock ICS experience, though by a much smaller margin).
I don’t miss the microSD slot or removable battery myself, though I can understand that they would be dealbreakers for some people. My only niggle with the One X is that the battery life could be better. The battery-hogging screen is beautiful though, and I don’t have problems with normal day to day use, so I’m happy with the trade-off overall.
It seems to me that HTC needs better marketing, and in the US market, to make its phones available across all the carriers rather than different models only being available on certain networks.
to be honest, removing the micro-sd expansion slot from the One X was the single most idiotic thing they did, closely followed by having a non-replaceable battery. To me the lack of these to items mean a phone instantly become a non-contender when choosing a new device, regardless of how good the rest of the spec is.
The truth is that most buyers of phones don’t ever change the SD card in the phone or buy a second battery.
I think you’re right on the second battery point – while quite a few people here mention it as a deal breaker, I suspect that’s because we’re over-represented with power-users who care enough to carry a second battery around.
The micro SD card point though I think is more relevant, given music collections, app downloads, even the inceasingly high megapixel count on phone cameras (and resultant increase in photo size). Of course, if the phones came with say 32GB at a minimum and a 64GB option, this would probably be OK but they don’t, and many also charge a ridiculous premium for upgrading from 16GB to 32GB where available, far above the cost of the extra memory itself.
Yep. The addition of a microSD card and a larger capacity battery on the One X would’ve instantly made me consider it more seriously. When the nearest contender (GS3) has both of those things and the difference in price is £20, it’s a no brainer.
I’ve been using HTC phones since the Orange SPV and was very much looking forward to the One X. However, the lack of micro SD and replaceable battery were massive deal breakers and pushed me towards the S3. I’ve yet to invest in a high capacity micro SD or spare battery but as I’m not commuting at the moment, that’s not an issue.
For my Desire I had 2 spare batteries. Using the internet on a hour long train journey through areas with poor signal can drain a battery in no time. And as much as I like HTC, the battery life on their phones has never been great, even when using power saver apps. It was too much of a gamble to go for the One X in the end.
Unfortunately, last year saw HTC lose focus in a big way (I lost track of how many different phones it released) although they seem to have realised as the phones in the One range are all well-designed and distinctive.
They’ll need to up their advertising and promotion big-time if they want to compete with the companies for who phones are only a part of their business.
How much of that bad performance is due to patent injunctions from Apple?
I can’t understand why HTC are experiencing poor sales. “The best phone” is no longer a clear choice, so I’d have thought this would be a great time for HTC, especially given how good the One X is.
When I upgrade my phone in the next few days I’m going for a One X or a Galaxy S3, or something similar, depending on price. The amount of people who’ve told me they’re fed up with their iPhone has really put me off buying one, plus I’ve no taste for iTunes and am used to Android already.
I keep saying this, but I think the only way other companies can take back the iPhone’s market share is to stick with purity of design and a single phone model, then concentrate on making that model as usable and compatible with as many apps as possible, as Apple have done. People don’t seem to mind selling a kidney to buy an iPhone, so I don’t think HTC or Samsung should focus on the lesser, cheaper phone models.
Yeah I completely agree to be honest. HTC had hundreds of different devices that pretty much all seemed to be identical, and none of them stood out.
So I think going for just a couple of models, and having a core focus product like the One series and maybe one other cheaper budget range makes much more sense, and people will be able to associate with them better as a brand, as they do with apple as it’s just the iphone and ipad in the moobile market.
Same thing with samsung as the key android range is the Galaxy. I think they have finally got this and now focusing in on a key product line should really help them.
I just switched from iOS to Android after playing with the one X in store and can safely say I don’t think I’ve ever go back to an iPhone now as the OS is just so damn restrictive! Despite the fact I’ve lost all my itunes syncing which is fantastic, especially as I work and run macs at home too, but the plusses of the One X easily outweigh that one loss.
But the build quality of the iPhone is still by far the most impressive of any phone I’ve seen (except of course for the fact that making calls on 4 is next to impossible as it has the worst signal I’ve ever had on a phone in the last 10 years!).
Hopefully this loss of profit will help them re-organise and focus and come out stronger.
The second battery thing really isn;t an issue for me either, I’ve bought a cheap ass chinese portable USB battery thing that can charge the phone 4 full cycles for less than £20 so if I’m away at a weekend I just take that, and it’s never run out in a day, despite having internet, email and games on all day long. But it’s interesting to see just how many people this is an issue for as it would never even cross my mind.