HTC hasn’t been faring good times in these couple of years, with dropping profits, internal lawsuits, wrong marketing efforts and more recently, the One M9’s criticism of not being a major flagship update for this year. In a general meeting a couple of days back, HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang apologized to shareholders for the company’s poor share price of NT$98 (NT92.8 as at 6 June 2015) on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the lowest point in the last 12 years.
Despite of these negative side of things, Wang emphasized that the company will be introducing a ‘hero product’ in October, which could be the company’s Re Vive Virtual Reality headset or the Butterfly 3 smartphone. Of course, the blame has been put on competition as Chinese phone makers have attempted to gobble up the smartphone market with cheaper prices while major competitors like Samsung and LG have upped their game in making truly attractive flagship smartphones.
According to Taipei Times, HTC spends 20% less than its competitors in marketing while investing heavily in RnD by increasing its budget 4% annually, which is one of the reasons why we are not looking too much promotion being done here for the company’s handset. The firm has also claimed that conventional marketing do not help sell their phones well and has therefore decided not to renew Robert Downey Jr’s contract after this year, while the company will continue to work with Taiwanese rock band MayDay, which has been pretty successful in Taiwan as we have seen ads in every part of Taipei city.
The share price drop shouldn’t come as a surprise given that HTC have not been introducing groundbreaking changes in the smartphone industry since the new HTC One (M7), the company has been dwelling too much on its overnight success while making the wrong marketing content for its recent phones. In this case, ex-CEO Peter Chou better had a good product coming up this October while Wang seriously needs to fulfill her word in increasing marketing efforts.
Meanwhile, #HelpThisCompany and on a side note, we really love the One M9+.
