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HTC Might Exit the Chinese Smartphone Market Soon; Pulls Smartphones from Major Chinese Market

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The Taiwanese handset maker, HTC, had recently revealed that it would stop selling its handsets at the two of China’s largest eCommerce portals, JD.com and Tmall, temporarily. And, finally, it has pulled off its smartphone chain from the two stores. This step taken by the company has compelled everyone to think that the company might be planning to take an exit from the Chinese smartphone industry.

htc china exit
Image Source: consumercomplaintsnumbers.co

In the recent times, the rumours were making rounds that Google was planning to acquire the company, but later, Google was only able to acquire the HTC’s Pixel team in a $1.1 billion deal. After Google’s acquisition, over 2,000 HTC engineers moved to work for Google. After the deal, HTC took to exit from India last July. So, from the decision of not selling its smartphones for a temporary period, it is pretty easy to predict that HTC might also be thinking of exiting China in the same way.

For now, the company has drawn off all its smartphones from the two eCommerce giant websites as well as their flagship stores. The company has also ceased the selling of its products from the other physical retail stores in China. But the company is still selling its smartphones, except some of its flagship smartphones including U11 or U11+, at its own official store as well as the VIVE flagship physical store in Shenzhen.

The company confirmed the news through a blog post, stating, “Due to the consideration of HTC China’s long-term business strategy, we will temporarily close the HTC mobile phone Jingdong flagship store and Tmall flagship store. HTC smartphones and accessories can still be purchased through HTC Official Mall and HTC VIVE Flagship Store. We will continue to provide quality pre-sales and after-sales service as always.”

The company has been seeing great competition due to the rise of the other rival companies, including Oppo, Vivo and Xiomi, that has dropped down its smartphone sales to a greater extent. Despite pulling off its flagship smartphones from the major retail stores in China, the company is still trying to get its hold in its other business arms.

The company has emphasised its focus on the HTC 5G Hub project that according to it will be bringing 5G to every home. HTC has also moved its focus towards its VR efforts. The company has also confirmed that it will be bringing the Android 9 update to its U11, U11 Plus as well as U12 smartphones by the end of May and starting of June.

Cher Wang: A Brilliant Entrepreneur & Contributor in the Rise of Wireless Devices

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

HTC is a renowned name in the smartphone manufacturing industry and is also emerging as one of the leaders in the field of virtual reality. The company headquarter is based in Taiwan and was founded in 1997. It was founded by Cher Wang, H. T. Cho and Peter Chou, as an original laptop and computers, designing and manufacturing company.

The company is known for its innovation, and so is its female co-founder Cher Wang. Cher Wang is one of the most successful woman entrepreneurs in the world and is successfully breaking into this male-dominated industry.

Early Life

Wang was born on 14 September 1958, in Taipei, Taiwan. Her father was a businessman who ran a business of plastic until he died at the age of 92.

Wang completed her high school education from The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California and pursued a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1981.

cher wang
Image Source: talkandroid.com

In 1980, her sister had co-founded a motherboard manufacturing company, named as First International Computer (FIC). Wang joined the company and started her first job in 1982. During her job in FIC, she got the opportunity to travel to several new countries in the world, where she was marketing the motherboard for personal computers.

Founding HTC

While pitching the motherboard features in front of the foreign traders, Wang realised the need of a portable computer system as the desktop computers were big and wired, so taking them to any other place was not that convenient.

After a lot of brainstorming, she thought of an idea to start a computer manufacturing business and founded HTC along with her co-founders H. T. Cho and Peter Chou. In the beginning, the company started with manufacturing Notebook laptops. In 1998, the company was building one of the world’s first touch and wireless hand-held devices.

Initial years were tough, but having the blood of businessman in her veins, Wang was able to foresee the upcoming success, hence invested a huge amount of money in the business. With time, she realized that the laptop manufacturing business is not working according to the plan, and she decided to switch her focus from building laptops to mobile phones. So, HTC started partnering with other companies to build Windows Mobile PDAs and smartphones.

In 2007, HTC acquired Dopod International, and in the next year the company launched its first GSM mobile phone, named HTC Max 4G. In the same year, the company also released its first Android Smartphone, the HTC Dream.

In 2009, the company rolled out its first touch screen smartphone powered by Windows OS, the HTC HD2, and also released its first user interface the HTC Sense.

In 2010, HTC sold over 24.6 million handsets. In 2011, Luxgen adopted the HTC smart technology to build the ‘Think Ahead’ feature for its vehicles such that the software would capture road conditions and potential hazards to its drivers.

In 2011, HTC won the “Device Manufacturer of the Year” in the Global Mobile Awards. In the same year, the company became the third-largest smartphone manufacturer, after Apple and Samsung. In the third quarter of the same year, HTC became the largest smartphone vendor in the U.S. ahead of Samsung and Apple.

The year of 2012 was challenging for the company, earning the lowest profits of all time, but in 2013, the release of HTC One the changed the scenario. In fact, it became the best phone of the year, winning various industry awards. In 2014, the company changed its marketing strategies, and with the launch of HTC One (M8), the company started selling the phones online, resulting in a rise in its sales.

In 2015, HTC partnered with Valve Corporation and launched its first virtual reality head-mounted display, Vive. After suffering by huge losses in the Smartphone industry due to the raised competition, it was Vive, that helped the company survive.

In 2017, Google acquired half of HTC’s staff that had worked on HTC’s design and research, by paying US$1.1 billion to the company. Google employed the HTC manpower in the manufacturing of Google’s Pixel smartphone.

Currently, the company is expanding in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) and virtual reality. In 2018 HTC partnered with the games and apps developer and publisher Animoca, such that to work in the field of games, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality and virtual reality.

Personal Life

Cher Wang is married to Wen-Chi Chen, the CEO of VIA Technologies. The couple has two children. In 2011, Wang and her husband were named as the wealthiest person in Taiwan, with a net worth of US$8.8 billion by Forbes. Wang was also listed in The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women at #56 in August 2012, and 54th most powerful woman in the world in 2014, by Forbes.

Wang is also active in charity and philanthropy works.