HTC is gone – TechCrunch



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Gather, campers, and listen to a tale as old as time.

Do you remember HTC's dream ? The Evo 4G? The Google Nexus One? What about Touch Diamond? All incredible devices. The HTC of 2018 is not the HTC that made these advanced devices. This company is gone.

It seems that HTC is preparing to lay off nearly a quarter of its workforce by removing 1,500 jobs in its manufacturing unit in Taiwan. After the cuts, the number of HTC employees will be less than 5,000 people worldwide. Five years ago, in 2010, HTC employed 19,000 people.

HTC started as a manufacturer of white label devices, offering carriers an option to sell devices bearing their name. The company also had a range of personal digital badistants (PDAs) from the HTC brand that competed in the nascent smartphone market. BlackBerry, or Research in Motion as it was called until 2013, ruled this segment of the phone, but from 2007, HTC began to make progress with touch devices that ran on Windows Mobile 6.0

. the Touch line with Diamond Touch, Touch Pro, Touch 3G and Touch HD. These are amazing devices for the time. They were fast, loaded with large user-replaceable batteries and microSD card slots. The Touch Pro even had a front camera for video calling.

HTC overplayed a custom skin on Windows Mobile, making it a bit more palatable to the general user. At that time, Windows Mobile was competing with the operating system of Nokia's BlackBerry and Symbian. None was fantastic, but Windows Mobile was by far the most discouraging for new users. HTC did what it could best and developed a smart skin that gave the phone a lot of features that would still be considered modern.

In 2009, HTC released the first Android device with Google. Called the HTC Dream or G1, the device was far from perfect. But the same thing could be said about the iPhone. This first Android phone also paved the way for HTC's future wins. The company quickly followed with the hero, Droid Incredible, Evo 4G and, in 2010, the amazing Google Nexus One.

After the G1, HTC started skinning Android in the same way as Windows Mobile. One can not overemphasize the importance of Android adoption. The HTC UI makes Android usable and attractive. HTC has helped to make Android a serious competitor of the iOS Apple.

In 2010 and 2011, Google turned to Samsung to manufacture the second and third Nexus flagship phones. It was at this time that Samsung started launching Android phones, and HTC could not keep up. That's not to say that HTC has not done the test. The company continued to release high-end phones: the One X in 2012, the One Max in 2013 and the One (M8) in 2014. But it did not matter. Samsung had taken over the Android standard and was charging ahead, leaving HTC, Sony, and LG to choose among the tracks.

By the end of 2010, HTC was the leading smartphone vendor in the United States. . In 2014, it beat Apple, Samsung and LG with about 6% market share in the United States. In 2017, HTC captured 2.3% of smartphone subscribers and now in 2018, some report that HTC holds less than half of the smartphone market.

Google bought a lot of HTC's talent in 2017 for $ 1.1 billion. The case has transferred more than 2,000 employees under the tutelage of Google. They will probably be responsible for working on the Pixel range of Google devices. It's a smart move. This HTC team was responsible for the release of incredible devices that no one had bought. But it is not entirely their fault. External forces are to blame. HTC has never stopped making high-end devices.

The HTC of today is mainly focused on the Vive product line . And it's a smart game. The HTC Vive is one of the best virtual reality platforms available. But HTC has been here before. Fortunately, he learned something from his mistakes in smartphones.

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