It’s no secret at how badly HTC did in the year 2012. Not only was the line of devices disappointing to many Android lovers, but their sales took a huge plummet as well. It has been speculated by many what the real reason was to HTC’s 2012 failure. There are many, but one of them is the fact that HTC had really, really marketing.
What does HTC think about it? They really do not seem too concerned, but do agree that the reason to such a poor year was due to bad marketing. CEO Peter Chou said:
“Our competitors were too strong and very resourceful, pouring in lots of money into marketing. We haven’t done enough on the marketing front.”
Okay, well at least they are recognizing an area that needs improvement. Does any of this sound familiar? What do I mean? Well, who else was a successful company who blames marketing for their downfall? Does anyone remember RIM? Their CEO said something very similar, which was:
“What we need to get a bit better at here is to have a little bit more of an ear toward the consumer. I want to strengthen this by bringing really good marketing expertise in.”
However, that didn’t seem to help them very well now did it? Now even though the two companies have similar statements, they do not share similar reasons as to why they have gone down instead of up.
Let us talk about HTC, and why they are where they are, because it definitely is more than just marketing like the CEO seems to think. The One Series did ‘okay’ and then we had the pretty promising Droid DNA at end of the 2012. Yet, HTC still needs to recognize their faults.
The first problem they had was their ‘distribution’ of devices. What do I mean by this? Let’s look at the One series. How many carriers was it on? Was it on all carriers like it should have been? You’re right it wasn’t. It was on AT&T exclusively when it came to the HTC One X, and all the lower versions went to T-Mobile. You didn’t see their devices on Verizon, or Sprint, or anywhere else. However, HTC did try to correct this error by releasing the HTC Droid DNA to Verizon which made a few I know excited.
This availability issue with HTC needs to be addressed, and it would look like they are coming around as they renewed their effort in China with the HTC Butterfly and a following report of 2.8 million sold followed for Q3 of 2012.
Then you have the injunction that Apple won, which put a ban on the HTC One X shortly after its released. That is always a hard thing to recover from, and HTC didn’t recover, which lead to it’s settlement with Apple. That settlement shocked everyone.
So HTC problems are not just marketing, but patents and distribution are. I know quite a few people who really enjoy HTC devices, but they are never available on their carriers, which has definitely drawn those people astray, especially when you have devices like the iPhone 5, Galaxy Note 2, or even the Galaxy S3.
The new rumor out for HTC now is the M7, and let us home that it will available on all carriers, which could possibly put HTC back in the running at least. The company has a way to go before they can be compared to Apple or Samsung again. HTC will definitely need to do something in order to avoid any further downfall.
What do you think about HTC? Is marketing really their only downfall like CEO Peter Chou says it is?
Source: Readwrite