HTC doesn't know what it's doing


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2012

 

We need to make sure we do not go so far down the line that we segment our products by launching lots of different SKUs. We have to get back to focusing on what made us great ? amazing hardware and a great customer experience. We ended 2011 with far more products than we started out with. We tried to do too much.

http://allthingsd.com/20120126/htc-to-give-up-on-quantity-and-try-quality/

2014

?The problem with us last year was we only concentrated on our flagship. We missed a huge chunk of the mid-tier market,? said co-founder and Chairwoman Cher Wang, speaking to Reuters in New York last week alongside Chialin Chang, HTC?s ?Chief Financial Officer.

http://techland.time.com/2014/02/10/htcs-new-plan-more-cheap-phones/

wat

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This topic is just as relevant as it was 5 years ago.  They're useless, which is a shame, because I like a lot of their hardware.

They clearly don't care about customers by stopping updates to reasonably new devices.  For that reason alone, I won't be a customer.  They don't care about me.

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Well I think you can read it a bit differently, before they had a zajillion devices, having a mide tier device of good quality(focus) doesn't mean going back to that.

but HTC is still floundering and doesn't seem where it's going, but I don't think that's the issue anyway, look at samsung, they're worse than HTC ever was a gajillion mediocre to low quality devices, even their flagship device isn't of particularly good quality, yet...

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Well I think you can read it a bit differently, before they had a zajillion devices, having a mide tier device of good quality(focus) doesn't mean going back to that.

but HTC is still floundering and doesn't seem where it's going, but I don't think that's the issue anyway, look at samsung, they're worse than HTC ever was a gajillion mediocre to low quality devices, even their flagship device isn't of particularly good quality, yet...

the htc one was a high end phone, that apparently got amazing reviews, yet not many people bought into them. I don't think a high quality mid range phone will save the day, especially since they are lower margin and they need to sell a ton more of them to equal the profits of the high end model. I think they tried their "iPhone" or "galaxy s" model,and it failed. they've tried the flooding the market with a billion models,and it failed. I think they're going back to that flood model again, if only for the marketshare,which may help with their image,and change the perception and give them more time.

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Basically.. they made too many phones the first time.. and not enough the second time.  They didn't make enough mid-level phones.  Be like this:

(Numbers are made up)

2011 -> 10 mid level,  5 high level, 12 low end
2014 -> 1 mid level, 2 high level, 1 low end.

They need to do something like:

5 mid level, 2 high level, 5-6 low end.   Have enough in each market to satisfy sales.. but don't push out new phones each month as it pushes sales away (Oh I'll just wait until the next one comes out).

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?The problem with us last year was we only concentrated on our flagship. We missed a huge chunk of the mid-tier market,? said co-founder and Chairwoman Cher Wang, speaking to Reuters in New York last week alongside Chialin Chang, HTC?s ?Chief Financial Officer.

Didn't they make like 100 different models of the HTC One all with different specs?

I mean there was the One V, One SV, One VX, One S, One J, One X, One XL, One X+, One Evo, the One, One Mini, One Max.

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actually you often make more money from a single mid and low end phone than a high end one, 

they're saying they will be targeting $150-$300 phones. I would hope they would be profiting more from the high end .

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They made too many devices and used a weird naming scheme that made things confusing (see Razorpost's post). I feel like they spread themselves too thin because of that. Their wide range of devices meant scrapping support earlier in order to focus on new devices. It sucks because the hardware is great but when a company abandons a product, it makes the customer feel bad. I've always liked HTC's hardware but I only bought one out of necessity. With the way their doing things, I don't plan on buying any product of theirs. I'm very happy with my Nexus 5 from Google (built by LG). I can take comfort in the fact that my device will get updates for at least a year and a half from release (October 31st 2013).

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HTC and Samsung used to be, at least for me, brands that could deliver great hardware and good experience at reasonable prices. I have an Samsung Ace that stopped in the 2.x update (Samsung released the phone with 2.1 Frogurt and updated until 2.35 GingerBread); the low quantity of RAM and under 1GHz makes the phone crawl with the very basic stuff and original ROM; fortunately i installed a modded ROM so it can barely work, but I'm pretty ###### of such high price for such a low end phone from Samsung; not only that but the phone simply is underpowered.

 

This OEMs should know by know, that Android requires better hardware so experience is flawless but they still deliver underpowered crap that does nothing but staining the image of the brand; for that i wont be buying a Samsung anytime soon (currently saving for a Nexus 5).

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they're saying they will be targeting $150-$300 phones. I would hope they would be profiting more from the high end .

 

They don't, high end phone shave a much smaller profit margin than low end phones. 

 

in the end they probably make about the same amount of money from a mig and low end phone as a high end. say 5 dollars per phone profit. but much smaller percentage on the high end. but the low and mid end phones sell a LOT more so they actually would make more. 

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They deserve all the hardship they get.

Last year they produced a few good phones that felt high quality (HTC One and 8X) and then they blew all the goodwill with lack of software updates and support.

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