HTC has announced that they will lay off nearly a quarter of their global workforce. The Taiwan-based smartphone maker, which was once seen as the leader in smartphone space, is struggling to make a name in the competitive market and has been suffering declining sales for quite a while now.
HTC has cut off almost 1,500 out of 6,450 of its workers as of June in its manufacturing unit in Taiwan. The people affected in this move will lose their jobs by September.
Why it Happened
This has happened after the president of HTC’s mobile division resigned. The company has also decided to combine its VR and mobile divisions into one.
HTC’s recent flagship U12+ hasn’t managed to bring the company back into business as once it used to be. Plus, their VR headset Vive Pro, despite getting all the praise, failed to become profitable for the company because of its price and lack of accessories.
These 1,500 employees are separate from the 2,000 workers from HTC’s design team that went over to Google in the $1.1 billion purchase back in January, which alleviated some of the financial pressure off of the company.
Sliding Revenues
Things are looking pretty bad for HTC because of their decline in sales and revenue in the last year. Scaling down was eventually expected to happen.
The company reported a 55.5% plunge in April revenues and a 46.7 percent slide in March sales. Their annual profits are declining so much that it’s hard to see where a recovery might begin.
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Despite all of this the company has affirmed its commitment to the remaining workforce in the mobile space, and is positive about the merge of its VR and smartphone divisions, as they believe the company will not only be able to stand on its own but also be able to make improvement in the future.
They’re failing because they don’t keep up with updates with their loyal customers, they keep inventing stupid options like U12 Squeeze failure.