We already know HTC’s finances aren’t great.
Despite recent successes with Vive and more recently the much-loved U11, HTC is still facing financial difficulties as its revenues have continued to fall for several years. According to sources of Bloomberg, HTC has reached the point of considering strategic business changes including sales or spin-offs of portions of the company.
HTC is said to have been working with and advisor to work on several different options for improving its financial position, which should come as little surprise to those following the mobile industry. An outright sale of the entire company is the least likely option due its size and relatively small potential market of buyers. A more likely result to these new discussions would be finding a strategic investment partner or spinning out various parts of the business to capitalize on their success (in the case of Vive) or cut dead weight (in the form of perhaps manufacturing facilities or other large assets).
HTC isn’t going away, but the backend of its business operations has to change to keep going.
The steady march of Samsung reaching the point of taking in a vast majority of worldwide profits from Android phone sales has hurt a lot of companies, but HTC has been put in a particularly precarious position. Over the past five years or so HTC has continued to give up market share on both the high-end to Samsung and also on the low-end to the likes of Huawei, Oppo and Motorola. At the same time, HTC continued to hold onto many vestiges of when it was one of the “big” manufacturers, with a large product portfolio, thousands upon thousands of employees and many large assets. In an essence, it just hasn’t been nimble enough.
Exploring new avenues for the future operation of HTC doesn’t necessarily mean the company is going away in terms of what we know and love about it. HTC is, after all, still valued at nearly $2 billion. But this surely means that there are changes to the back-end of the business in the works that could slim down the company and keep it around for some time coming.
HTC U11
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qld3SurE5zk?modestbranding=0&html5=1&rel=0&autoplay=0&wmode=opaque&loop=0&controls=1&autohide=0&showinfo=0&theme=dark&color=red&enablejsapi=1]
- HTC U11 review
- HTC U11 specs
- Manufacturing the U11: Behind the scenes
- Join our U11 forums
- HTC U11 vs Galaxy S8
- HTC U11 vs LG G6
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