The latest news from Indian tech industry is the exit of Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC from India. HTC’s South Asia President Faisal Siddiqui, sales head Vijay Balachandran and the product head R Nayyar have already quit the company. HTC has already asked 70-80 employees to leave, keeping around 10 employees for the India office. Once the darling company, of Indian users, could not foresee market trends and had heart-breakingly failed to understand the consumer’s dynamic needs. Now, HTC has finally lost the market share to Chinese players in the Indian smartphone market. The future plans of the company is to focus on VR and AR products along with high-speed connectivity in the Indian market.
“Being an important market to HTC, we will continue to invest in India in the right segments and at the right time,” HTC said in the statement.
However, the company is facing a hard time with its distributors who claim that HTC owes money in several crores. HTC answered, “HTC is aware of the potential litigation issue but is awaiting full details before commenting further. We are liaising with our suppliers and distribution channel partners to ensure no disruption to our customers or our business. Upon receiving the official complaint, HTC will consider all legal options to protect our rights.”
The company isn’t doing good globally too, HTC shipped only 630,000 products in Q1 of this year globally, compared to 2-million in the last year. Its latest flagship phone, U12 failed to impress the audience with the given price. The company has reportedly laid off 1500 workers from its manufacturing facility in Taiwan. HTC signed a $1.1 billion deal with Google in September last year that saw 2,000 HTC employees join the technology giant.
“HTC suddenly found itself in competition with Chinese players and could not evolve to meet the growing needs of the users resulting in this unfavorable decision,” says industry experts.
