HTC to cut jobs, discontinue models to revive market share

In a bid to revive its losing market share, HTC has announced to cut jobs and discontinue models as part of its cost reduction strategy. The Taiwanese smartphone company wants to focus on making high-end devices instead, something – it believes – will help it compete against Apple and Samsung.

“The cuts will be across the board. They will be significant,” HTC CFO Chialin Chang told reporters, adding that the cost reductions will be implemented by the first quarter next year.

Chang said HTC was hoping to sell high-end models in growing markets such as India, where the company has a 20 percent market share of mid to high range phones.

Once a major player in the smartphone industry, HTC has been grappling in losses. Just like the past few years, the company reported a second-quarter loss and the trade pundits are expecting the outlook to remain gloomy for the next four quarters as well. So far, HTC shares have fallen 51 percent this year.

“We believe HTC will keep losing share in the smartphone market and will keep losing money,” analyst Calvin Huang with Taiwan’s SinoPac Securities wrote in a recent research note.

The company’s poor state of the affairs has been attributed to its unoriginal and confused ideas as well as increasing competition in the high-end segment from Apple Corp and Samsung Electronics and countless phone makers in the budget segment.

Source: Reuters

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