As its southwards fall continues, HTC has decided to sell its current & upcoming fleet of Android & WP8 devices at a much reduced aggressive price points in a desperate bid to turn its fortunes around. HTC is said to be working on completely doing away with the Beats audio technology in all of their upcoming handsets in order to reduce the cost per handset.
HTC which has been one of the top Android based manufacturers in the last year has seen its markets share fall rapidly in 2012. Although, HTC had a major relook at its strategy after which they decided to adopt the “Quality over Quantity” approach. As a result, HTC released a few handsets from the second quarter of 2012, thus reducing their manufacturing and marketing costs among others.
And even after the release of the highly acclaimed One series, HTC has not been able to turn their fortunes around and is still reporting operating losses. And have been forced to lay off some of its workforce and even shutting down operations & exiting markets like Brazil and Korea.
HTC’s downfall in part could be blamed on the rapid rise of Samsung which broke many records with the Galaxy SII and even its latest release the Galaxy SIII completely overshadowed the One series. Although, HTC is equally to blame for its sluggishness in innovating new devices and instead releasing innumerable and inconsequential version of the Sensation which eventually led to the fall of market share towards the end of 2011 and the southwards journey has continued till today.
Now with the new iPhone launch just around the corner, this seems to be logical solution to go one step down in the pricing segment with its flagship devices, as it would be very difficult for HTC to ‘hold fort’ in front of devices like the iPhone 5 or the Galaxy SIII.
Though, that would be a short term solution. In the long run HTC has to take some substantial steps in order to resurrect their brand value, perhaps concentrating on booming markets like India might help. HTC also seems to be working with Facebook closely on a FB branded smartphone. Although nothing is clear yet, there might be a possibility of Facebook pumping in some investments in HTC as rumors of them harboring desires of launching their own FB branded devices heats up.
