Engadget Daily: Microsoft layoffs, Tesla sales and more!
Microsoft announced the largest layoffs in company history, Tesla can’t sell cars in most of the United States, Xbox Entertainment Studios is set to close and HTC has an executive exodus problem. Read on for Engadget’s news highlights from the last 24 hours.
Microsoft cuts 18,000 jobs as part of its largest layoff ever
Microsoft announced the biggest round of layoffs in company history, giving 18,000 workers their walking papers. CEO Satya Nadella explained that the company’s new strategy is designed to make it “more agile” moving forward.
Why Tesla Motors can’t sell cars in most of the United States
Why is it so hard to buy a Tesla? It’s a combination of archaic laws and a stubborn automotive industry.
Microsoft closing Xbox Entertainment Studios
As part of the biggest layoffs in company history, Microsoft is closing Xbox Entertainment Studios, the wing dedicated to producing original video content for the Xbox platform.
In and out: a look at HTC’s two-year executive exodus
Despite making some highly acclaimed smartphones, HTC has struggled to keep high-level employees from leaving the company. Over the last two years, 22 members of its senior management team have left. Is it bad luck or is something else happening?
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In and out: a look at HTC’s two-year executive exodus
If you get offered a high-level position with HTC, run. At least, that’s the reputation the Taiwan-based manufacturer has unfortunately built over the last two years. Since 2012, no fewer than 22 members of its senior management have left the company. Some took off for personal reasons; others faced criminal charges; and still others moved on to different companies. Many of these exits have been attributed to HTC’s state of health, as the smartphone (and soon to be smartwatch) maker has made costly mistakes and experienced a string of decreasing profits stretching back to the end of 2011. Let’s take a look at each major departure from the beginning until the present day.
April 2012
Just eight months after signing a $300 million deal with Beats Electronics, making it possible for HTC to use the headphone company’s sound profiles in its handsets, CFO Winston Yung — the executive in charge of penning the transaction — was booted from his role and transferred into corporate development. CEO Peter Chou denied rumors that his ouster was related to the deal, despite the fact that HTC sold a huge chunk of its stake just three months later (and the remainder a year after that). Unfortunately, Beats wasn’t the only possible reason why Yung may have been shown the door; HTC’s finances were in a significant downward spiral, something that continues to adversely affect the company today.
As for Yung’s role in corporate development, his contributions (if any) have remained largely private; even his LinkedIn page mentions April 2012 was the end of his HTC career. Yung is now a partner for McKinsey & Company in Hong Kong.
November 2012
HTC announced that CMO John Wang (the brains behind the “quietly brilliant” campaign) would be leaving the company in December, although the process to replace him began the previous March. It didn’t reveal details on what happened. It’s clear, however, that Chou wanted to move his company’s marketing efforts in another direction, since Wang was replaced by Benjamin Ho, a former CMO for Motorola. When Ho began in January, his first assignment was nicknamed “Marketing 2.0,” which focused on mass-market brand outreach and “holistic marketing.”
March 2013
March was a hard month for the UK branch. Just a week prior to the launch of the original HTC One, UK Director Phil Roberson left the company, citing the pressures of work and wanting to spend more time with his wife. (He now works for Vodafone.) Roberson was with HTC for less than two years before being replaced by Philip Blair, VP of product and operations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The very next week, UK head of sales Michael Coombes and head of marketing James Atkins followed Roberson’s lead. No reason for departure was given at the time, but it wasn’t long before the pair announced that they founded a phone company of their own called Kazam; its website currently offers two Android smartphones and a featurephone.
April and May 2013
The snowball grew and picked up speed shortly after HTC launched the One and the First, its unsuccessful AT&T-exclusive “Facebook Phone.” During this tumultuous time, seven high-profile company representatives parted ways with the company: Chief Product Officer Kouji Kodera, South Asia CEO Lennard Hoornik, Global Retail Marketing Director Rebecca Rowland, Director of Digital Marketing John Starkweather, Global Digital Service head Elizabeth Griffin, VP of Global Communications Jason Gordon and Product Strategy Manager Eric Lin.
After being with the company for three years, Kodera left “to pursue other interests,” according to an official HTC statement; soon afterward he founded a wearable startup called Zero360. Hoornik, who had already been on leave for two months for unknown reasons, joined Dyson the following month. Rowland moved to Microsoft and then Amazon; Starkweather headed to AT&T; Griffin left to work for Nintendo; Gordon is now with an unannounced startup and Lin now works on Microsoft’s Skype team.
The departure of so many big names within the company sparked a number of rumors about unhappy conditions within HTC’s walls. These flames were further fanned by a tweet from Lin, encouraging his former colleagues to follow his lead in leaving the company. Around the same time, a source close to The Verge that said the company was in “utter free fall.”
June 2013
In case those seven departures weren’t enough to arouse suspicion, the company’s COO Matthew Costello stepped down from his position. According to an internal email, Costello stayed on as an executive advisor in Europe, although later that year he came on as COO of Beats; it likely is no coincidence that he was on the company’s board of directors. Curiously, some analysts actually felt that his exit was a good sign for HTC: Bamboo Lin, an analyst from SinoPac Securities, told Bloomberg Businessweek that the company had too many executives, and a moderate streamlining would be beneficial.
August and September 2013
This may have been the biggest sting of the year for HTC, as three of the company’s top designers were arrested (and later indicted) for leaking trade secrets, falsifying expenses and receiving kickbacks from suppliers. VP of Product Design Thomas Chien, R&D Director Bill Wu and Senior Manager of Design and Innovation Justin Huang had been planning to leave the company and start a smartphone maker of their own. The trio leaked plans of the unannounced Sense 6.0 design to an outside partner who they intended to do business with. The men faced millions of dollars in fines and at least 10 years in prison per charge.
Additionally, HTC China President Ray Yam was demoted to a position overseeing the development of emerging business. He’s since moved on to become managing director for Electrolux.
October 2013
After being with HTC for just four months, Global VP of PR and Communications Lorain Wong left the company for personal reasons. Although she agreed to stay on as a consultant for a few months, she has since accepted a role as the CMO of Global Cloud Xchange, which owns a large, private, undersea fiber-optic cable system.
April 2014
The next person to leave the company was Senior VP of Design and User Experience Scott Croyle, who took over for Kodera nearly a year earlier and was responsible for the One M8′s design and hardware development. No official reasons were given. This was a significant blow to the company; given HTC’s attention to design, losing two chief designers in less than a full year didn’t look good, to say the least. HTC claims that this is part of a long-term transition and that Croyle will stick around in a consultancy role and will be focused on “special projects.” According to his LinkedIn page, however, his time with HTC officially came to a close in April.
July 2014
Hold this cat. The latest hits to the company’s senior management took place yesterday, as Ho and President of Engineering and Operations Fred Liu announced their resignation and retirement, respectively. During Ho’s short tenure, he was responsible for HTC’s $1 billion “Here’s to Change” campaign featuring Robert Downey Jr., which our sources tell us led to the exec’s departure. Ho will reportedly remain with the company until the end of the year, though it’ll likely be in a limited capacity.
As for Liu, he’s wrapping up a lengthy 16-year stint with HTC, but he’s not leaving entirely — not yet, at least. Bloomberg reports that he’s simply dropping day-to-day operations and transitioning into a “strategic advisory role.”
Although Liu’s departure could easily be nothing more than retirement, given his tenure, there still seems to be a pattern of saving face by transitioning to smaller roles, a path taken by many other executives who’ve left HTC in the last two years. In fact, one source told The Verge that at least one of the two were “fired in a nice way.”
Wrap-up
Aside from the trio of indictments late last year, the list of departing executives can be split into two camps. Several of them, primarily in design and product management, appear to have left of their own accord, suggesting that they were unhappy with the company’s direction or were wrapped up in other chaotic elements of the business. This doesn’t come as a surprise, since plenty of reports have corroborated this theory in the past year. Several others, mostly in marketing and operations, seem to have been compelled to resign, often shortly after the company’s costliest mistakes: The Beats partnership, the HTC First and the Robert Downey Jr. marketing campaign, to name a few.
On a positive note, this indicates that a cleansing is taking place within HTC’s headquarters; the folks responsible for the company’s biggest blunders in the last two years are no longer there, and bringing in fresh blood is arguably a good thing for most companies — especially those that are experiencing internal strife and financial downturn. On the other hand, can it find enough new talent eager to take on the challenge of jumping on board, given the company’s current struggles? As long as the answer is yes, there’s little reason to suspect that HTC can’t undo its negative reputation and reverse its misfortunes. If the answer is no, however, the company’s in for another couple rough years.
[Image credits: Getty Images]
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, HTC
AT&T nabs off-contract HTC Desire 610 for $200
AT&T on Wednesday confirmed the upcoming availability of the HTC Desire 610. Arriving July 25, the phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat with HTC’s 6 Sense UI and features a 4.7-inch display. Powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor, the Desire 610 also packs 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage with microSD expansion, and a 8MP/1.3MP camera duo.
AT&T will sell the Desire 610 for $199 as part of its GoPhone service, meaning there’s no contract involved. Those who opt to spread payments out can do so for $8.34 per month over 24 months of $10 per month over 20 months. AT&T
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HTC senior execs resign ahead of smart wearable launch
HTC may be back on its road to recovery thanks to its One (M8) flagship phone, but it’s now facing yet another managerial change. According to Bloomberg’s Tim Culpan, the phone maker’s CMO Ben Ho has just resigned, making it a rather short stint since he joined a little over a year and a half ago. Our own sources implied that this had been expected for a while, and that the $1 billion “Here’s To Change” marketing campaign was the main culprit, as it failed to get its money’s worth in return (despite chairwoman Cher Wang being a big fan of the hipster trolls featured in the ads). While Ho is no longer the CMO, he will remain at HTC until end of this year.
Culpan also reported that Fred Liu, the President of Engineering and Operations, has dropped day-to-day operations to pick up a strategic advisory role, as he prepares for retirement after almost 16 years of service. According to Taiwanese magazine Global Views, back then it took HTC founder HT Cho over a year to convince Liu to leave Digital Equipment Corporation — the former employer of Cho and CEO Peter Chou — and join his then new smartphone OEM.
Neither resignation should affect HTC’s roadmap in the very near future. We understand that the Taiwanese company’s preparing to launch its first smart wearables in the coming months — maybe to coincide with IFA in September. Regardless, it shouldn’t take long before HTC fills these voids.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile, HTC
Source: Bloomberg
Android “L” developer preview gets ported to HTC One (M7)
Other than the official Android “L” Developer Preview which is available for LG Nexus 5 and Asus Nexus 7 (2013) devices by Google, we’ve seen it ported to the Nexus 4 recently. We knew that this is not the end of it though, of course.
HTC One (M7) unexpectedly gets its own Android “L” Developer Preview port thanks XDA Senior Member ssrij and a team of developers. Nexus 4 port was kind of expected, but not this one. The port is still in alpha though, so keep this in mind if you intend on flashing it. The port was made possible thanks to ramdisk and kernel modifications which ssrij had to do. We say it once again, this is an alpha version of the port and some things will simply not work, at all.
Keeping all this in mind, if you’re interested in it follow this link.
Via: XDA
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HTC launched an affordable HTC Desire 616 device sporting a MediaTek octa-core processor
HTC is really trying its best to improve on their profits. It seems to be working considering they had their first profitable quarter in quite some time. They really did something great when they introduced the first HTC One device and only improved on it by releasing HTC One (M8). Not everything revolves around flagship phones though.
HTC unveiled their new mid-high tier smartphone offering in form of HTC Desire 616. They launched it in Russia and in parts of Asia. Let us take a look at the specs:
- 1.4GHz MediaTek octa-core
- 5″ 720p display (294ppi)
- 1GB of RAM
- 4GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD card up to 32GB)
- 8MP camera with autofocus and LED flash
- 2MP front-facing shooter
- Android 4.2.2 OS with HTC Sense 5.5 on top of it
- Weights 150g
- Dual-SIM
It is kind of weird the device will launch with Android 4.2.2, but it will hopefully get the update to a newer version of the OS. The device won’t come to the U.S, at least for the time being. It will be priced between $200-300. This seems like a decent offering by HTC, it might fit some people, are you one of them?
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There can’t be only one: Technology’s singular obsession
Last week, Google announced the aptly named Android One, a plan to unite the myriad budget devices running its mobile operating system. But Sundar Pichai and crew aren’t alone in banking on the singular power of one. No, Google’s One is just one of many in the industry’s recent past. It turns out, everyone wants to be the one.
[Image: Getty]
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Laptops, Science, Internet, Software, Sony, Microsoft, HTC, Google, Acer
Guess who’s back?: HTC is back in the black thanks to the HTC One M8
Late last year, Taiwanese device manufacturer, HTC, was not in a good place. While its flagship device, the HTC One, had exceeded expectations, a slow start due to supply issues ensured that it never really saw its full potential. A bevy of subpar devices that followed it, including the HTC One Mini and HTC One Max, really hit HTC hard, which became months of quarterly losses following October 2013 after having not made a loss since it became public in 2002. Not one to be kept down, HTC changed their game plan: their fearless CEO, Peter Chou, downgraded his duties to focus on smartphone development, and HTC introduced several new services and, of course, the HTC One M8, which I predicted would all play a part in eventually seeing HTC rise from that dark place. And lo and behold, in July 2014, HTC is back in the black.
In the press release for its financial results in Q2 2014, HTC reports that its quarterly net profit came in at a healthy NT$2.78 billion (or approximately $93 million USD), which is almost the same amount HTC lost in the quarter ending October 2013. A lot of this can be attributed to the resounding popularity of the HTC One M8, but HTC’s mid-range devices, like the Desire line, have also improved in quality which is sure to have helped it in other regions. Whatever really caused the turn around, it’s good to see HTC back on the up, and hopefully this time they continue doing what they’re good at: being “quietly brilliant”.
What do you think about HTC getting back into the black? Let us know your opinion in the comments below.
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HTC turns profit in Q2, company’s first profit this year
At this point we could say HTC is used to losing money. They make great devices and yet the are unable to turn profit by selling them. Q2 was finally a successful quarter for the company, they turned first profit this year.
HTC’s revenue in Q2 was NT$65 billion ($2.17 billion) out of which they got NT$2.26 billion ($75 million) in profit. They actually had lower revenue this year than they did last year in the same period, but that’s quite normal considering they cut unnecessary costs. Besides, their net profit is higher. We hope HTC will continue turning profit in the coming months, but we’re afraid that won’t happen. We assume HTC One (M8) boosted their profit in Q2 quite significantly considering its been praised all around and has been recognized as one of the best phones this year.
Do you think HTC can keep the momentum going?
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OnePlus tablet, recent HTC Volantis specs turn out to be hoax
You know that old saying of, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”? Looks like that applies to not one, but two articles we covered yesterday. As it turns out, both the OnePlus tablet and new HTC Volantis specifications were the result of a hoax. According to @evleaks, the tips came from a 14-year-old posing as a Google engineer.
Let’s hope these were blips on a radar and that Evan Blass (evleaks) doesn’t fall victim to such chicanery again. On one hand we see him taking a stronger stance in vetting his sources and leaks; one the other hand we see more people taking a crack at his defense system.
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