The HTC fall from grace is quite remarkable

In years gone, HTC was one of the most successful and sought-after smartphone brands worldwide, but time has not been kind for the Taiwanese firm as financials for 2018 emerge.

Back in 2012, your correspondent had a One X model HTC and it was a very good phone. Due to a slight malfunction more recently, there was also a couple of months with a second-hand HTC 10. It wasn’t a phone which set the world on fire (although ask Samsung how that went down), but it was a perfectly good device. Unfortunately, it appears the brand is just not doing enough right.

As you can see from the table below, 2018 has not been a kind year as the team brought in revenues of 23.7 billion New Taiwan Dollar (NTD), 61% down on 2017.

All figures in New Taiwan Dollar (millions)

Just as a comparison to previous years, in 2017 HTC brought in revenues of 62.120 billion NTD, 2016 was 78.161 billion NTD and 2015 was 121.684 billion NTD. If you go all the way back to 2012, the team brought in a remarkable 465.795 billion NTD.

Of course, you have to bear in mind the business has offloaded a substantial part of its business to Google for $1.1 billion, most notably c.2000 engineers who were working on the Pixel device anyway and a horde of IP, but HTC is still running as a standalone business. Back in November, Sprint announced it was partnering with Qualcomm and HTC to develop a mobile ‘smart hub’ that will run on 5G next year.

Every now and then it is useful just to look back through the years and remember how different things were. HTC used to be one of the mobile industry’s heavyweights, alas, no more. RIP HTC.