Chialin Chang, Chief Financial Officer for HTC, told reporters that the job cuts won’t be concentrated in any single division, but will take place “across the board”, Reuters reports.
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Q2 2015 was the first full quarter of availability for the HTC One M9 but the company’s flagship device hasn’t been able to turn its fortunes around, HTC’s guidance for Q3 2015 predicts declining revenues coming in at $600-$695 million.
It’s probably not a controversial statement to say that HTC has been having a bit of a rough go lately, and while the company did post some profits at the end of 2014, it reported a loss in its most recent quarter.
On August. 6, HTC announced weaker than expected demand for its high-end Android smartphones. To get out of it, the company will reduce the number of smartphone models it offers and focus its efforts on high-end handsets, especially in emerging markets like India.
HTC said it “continues to invest in promising new product areas such as virtual reality, where the company is working with over 1,000 developers on content creation over a wide spectrum of applications including gaming, entertainment and education, to ensure a compelling ecosystem ahead of the highly anticipated launch of HTC Vive at the end of the year”. Analyst Calvin Huang of Taiwan’s SinoPac Securities wrote recently, “We believe HTC will keep losing share in the smartphone market and will keep losing money”. However, Chang said HTC won’t see revenue from those projects until 2016.
Chang said the cost cuts would extend to the first quarter of 2016 but declined to give further details.
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HTC expects the VR product to bring revenue growth momentum to the company, he said. The company faces an uphill battle, as it falls into the catch-all “Others” category in global smartphone market share.
