Chairwoman Blames HTC Downfall on Bad Innovation, Lawsuits with Apple; Cher Wang borrowed the Bible quote “humility goes before honor” in showing that HTC “has done a lot of self-reflections” in the past two years
February 23, 2013 Leave a comment
Chairwoman Blames HTC Downfall on Bad Innovation, Lawsuits with Apple
02-22 11:44 Caijing
IDC statistics showed HTC sold 7.1million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, a remarkable 30.6% fall from a year earlier, leaving it a meager 3.1 percent share in the global smart phone market.
The recent downfall of HTC, the Taiwan mobile phone maker, was largely a result of a lack of innovation, said its chairwoman who repeatedly suggested the company be more innovative to turn around its ailing business.
Cher Wang borrowed the Bible quote “humility goes before honor” in showing that HTC “has done a lot of self-reflections” in the past two years. HTC replaced Nokia to become the world’s second-largest smart phone maker in April, 2011, and a set of glithches have emerged ever since leading to slumping market share and profits.
Her comments were made in an exclusive interview with Tencent, a leading news portal in China.
IDC statistics showed HTC sold 7.1million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, a remarkable 30.6% fall from a year earlier, leaving it a meager 3.1 percent share in the global smart phone market.
Innovation is the biggest issue in the company where ambitions ideas often failed to pan out, according to Wang. HTC should put more emphasis on innovation. “It’s something HTC has to do,” she said.
HTC has also done a bad job in marketing and the construction of supply chain, Wang said. In addition, lawsuits with Apple contributed to HTC’s decline in the past year.
Some of HTC phones were banned from importing to the United States after it failed in a patent dispute with Apple in 2011. The United States marks an important market which contirbtued 50.6 percent to the company’s overall revenue in 2010.
Wang said HTC will open more stores and flagship stores in the mainland as China recently overtakes the U.S. to become the world’s largest smart phone market.
She also said HTC is not interested in developing more affordable phones, although markets have a good reason to doubt its ability in confronting Apple’s possible intrusion to its space by launching an iPhone mini at a price of 330 U.S. dollars.
Cheaper phones could mean lower quality and lesser innovation, she said.
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