High Tech Concern: Struggling HTC to slash a quarter of workforce Smartphone manufacturer HTC will slash almost a quarter of its employees in an effort to become profitable. All the job cuts will be at its plant in Taiwan, where 1,500 people – roughly 22 of the total workforce – will be let go as the company deals with falling sales. It doesn't help that its latest phone, the U12+, doesn't …
HTC is the sad man's capitalism story... Such was the passion that avid fans (including non-tech-heads) used to regularly follow the XDA-developers forums to learn how to make better use of them.
Over time as XDA's failed one-by-one, people were forced to adopt Android-Slurp-Goo. Not a great UX substitute by comparison and strategically an own-goal as regards app availability and of course *Eric-Schmidt - Privacy-is-history*.
Now around the world, choice is mostly Feature-Phone or Android-Slurp. However, In another multiverse HTC has licensed a privacy-based-OS and is selling smartphones again at great heights...
Feature-sets today are just strategic partnerships with Snap, Twitter, Facebook or crap shopping platforms. But that's hardly a bonus feature, its tech at is worst - mostly compromised!
Take traveling, you still have to bring a dedicated camera for 30-40x optical zoom and night-time / daytime video recording etc. So why don't HTC invest in solving that?
No, no, social media toxicity is your only feature-set this year and the next, and every other! Thanks HTC!
There's no incentive to buy HTC anymore, there's nothing compelling about it. Its a hell of a lot cheaper to just buy a unlocked anonymous-brand smartphone for under 50 euro. Then Root it / Install Lineage-OS or purge / disable every single app / service.
Then navigate to F-Droid and just download non-slurp open-source alternatives to everything from the keyboard to the calculator. Plus install Firewall / App-blocker at VPN (non-root) level (Netguard)...
"Then navigate to F-Droid and just download non-slurp open-source alternatives to everything"
While that is my plan, I've not spotted any VR apps on F-droid, and there's a few other gaps (no pun intended) in their app coverage. Yes, I do intend to write some and put them on F-Droid, some day, eventually. I have a TODO list that is just a pointer to all my other TODO lists.
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Their OEM WinMo phones - they launched a new one, and I'd buy whichever rebrand was the cheapest. TomTom in my pocket without a pile of random adapters stuck into my ipaq!
(I feel I've lost the millennial audience already)
Nexus One - why can't my phone have an f'in rollerball today (complete with rainbow notifications)? Why must I paw at my screen like an animal?
*then some Samsungs - lovely tech, worst customer service ever, never bought one since*
HTC One. God I loved that phone. Lovely black lump of metal, with a camera that sacrificed MP for the ability to shoot in the dark, and Boomsound. Crap name, but lovely stereo speakers that actually sounded good and went loud.
Then I had one or two more I progressively hated and left HTC.
Sure thy don't care what I think, and it's probably too late - but HTC One M6 is hands down the phone I was happiest to own ever.
After that it was all a bit down-hill as they tried to play catchup with the other brands, and never quite did, but managed to lose what made them special on the way.
My hope for HTC phones is that they find a niche again.
We have Apple and Sansung with the latest cutting edge tech (for the sake of it). Then no shortage of great brands giving you 90% of that for 50% of the price. HTC can't beat that, and shouldn't try. Just be unique again (and I don't mean a malfunctioning squeeze)
'All the job cuts will be at its plant in Taiwan, where 1,500 people – roughly 22 of the total workforce'
Missing % sign somewhere or are they getting rid of 22 really hard working people?
And, yes, I know about the 'Tips and corrections' link but it's a mailto: and I don't have an email client installed so it doesn't work.'
Why not make the Tips and corrections open a box I can post my tip and/or correction to. Not that hard and it would stop me posting corrections like this that will no doubt be deleted by a moderator.
Just sayin'
Cheers,
Keef.
I fully agree with that, have an upvote. I was gonna comment on the same mistake.
Though I do have an email client, it is a bit of a pain to try to remember which of my almost infinite number of email addresses I used for El Reg. I'm a fairly decent proof reader to.
Recently I have been exchanging some emails with their webmaster over a couple of problems, I might just get the hang of it soonish. On the other hand, it's often fun to wrap the correction, posted as a comment, in a joke, and seems to be a tradition. Likely the tradition is due to most others having the same issues with the current system.
Hey,
A sad story about the employee or about htc.
A Fast Company ranked HTC as the 31st most innovative company in the world.
Now its struggle to survive that was a failure not htc but the whole company which not see future opportunity.
so I must say this is not happening to have to find an idea which will survive it via its market situations and its employee also.
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