Unfortunately coinciding with Friday the 13th, approximately 20% of the employees from varying departments at HTC Corp, the U.S. branch of HTC, have been laid off. The official line from HTC is that this is to “streamline and optimize our organisation and improve efficiencies after several years of aggressive growth”, but it’s really no surprise that HTC was going to have to lay off some people after it reported that it was going to be operating at a loss in Q3 of this year.
It’s really unfortunate that some people have lost jobs due to HTC’s downturn, and it seems not even HTC’s new advertisements featuring Robert Downey Jr. have managed to illicit any sort reaction from consumers. Obviously, the biggest finger is pointing at Peter Chou, CEO, who has been accused before for a lack of long term vision for HTC, though it seems there are still quite a few important people on Chou’s side who want him in the top job. Whoever you think is to blame for all this, it surely can’t be helpful that there’s been no mention of the HTC One Max in any sort of detail for some time now (besides the mention of a fingerprint scanner) and instead continuing to make colour variants of its now 7 month-old flagship, the HTC One. Hopefully there’s still enough goodwill for HTC whenever their next smartphone lands.
We definitely hope this will be the last of the layoffs for HTC. What do you think about this news? Sign of bad things to come, or perhaps a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel? Let us know what you think in the comments.
