The Death of HTC?
How HTC’s decisions ultimately led to the companies demise…
I used to be a big, big fan of HTC, but over the last 3 years or so, it’s been difficult to advocate any of their phones.
Recently, HTC unveiled their latest and greatest handset, the HTC U12+.
With a top end spec sheet, an attractive body and some very interesting new technologies to once again push the boundaries of what we expect from our mobile devices.
Realistically, HTC has been doing this for almost a decade now. From Beats Audio and BoomSound to front facing speakers and dual rear cameras, HTC has been changing the game since 2010.
I fell in love with HTC as a company in 2009, a year before they released the world’s first ever phone capable of using 4G — the HTC Evo 4G.
Since, they’ve introduced us to metal bodied phones, Beats Audio and dual front facing speakers in 2013, dual rear cameras with portrait mode and motion pictures in 2014, 3D displays and camera in 2011, pressure sensitive edges in 2017, HTC BoomSound and DACs in AUX ports in 2015 etc, etc…
HTC were the kings of innovation. They were quietly brilliant.
It’s funny because the top Android phone at the moment, the Google Pixel 2, was manufactured by HTC.
HTC’s President of Smartphone and Connected Devices Business resigned from his post in February, around about when the world started to feel like this was going to be the companies last flagship.
This is partly because Google purchased a large part of HTC’s hardware division to work on the Pixel line, which seems like a clever move for Google as it means they have real experience now working on their phones.
Nonetheless, it hurts me that a company so great could fall so far, especially because I know exactly where they went wrong and why it happened.
So, where did they go wrong?
HTC biggest mistake, by far, was their horrible, terrible marketing campaign. Bar a handful of ads starring Robert Downey Jr. in the early 2010s, they did little to know mainstream marketing to push their products.
Even when releasing the HTC U12+ last week, HTC opted to uploading few short videos on YouTube announcing and showcasing the phone. No ads (as far as I know), no handsets to YouTubers, no billboards, no hype… Nothing.
It takes one look at Huawei, OnePlus and Honor to tell you how powerful YouTube marketing is and how influential characters like MKBHD, UnboxTherapy (Lewis) and others can be in this industry.
Another look at the extreme efforts of Samsung and Apple tells you just how important marketing is to those two companies, and how good marketing can genuinely reshape a whole market.
HTC’s lack of advertising and marketing makes it hard for them to sell units. We can’t buy what we don’t know exists.
They failed to compete with themselves
Perhaps their biggest failure was their decision to compete with Samsung and Apple directly. It’s imperative that you know your audience and that you know what you do well so you can embrace your unique qualities.
HTC decided to ditch a lot of pioneering technology in order to compete directly with the top guns, which ultimately cost them a lead and gave these other companies the opportunity to further develop HTCs ideas.
Take a look at the things I mentioned earlier to get an idea here. Imagine if HTC continued to work on Portrait mode back in 2014, as opposed to a world now where Samsung, Google and Apple are only just catching on.
Imagine a world where all phones had dual front facing speakers with killer sound quality, via Dolby Atmos or B&O.
HTC failed to relish being different. They were never going to be ahead forever so they should have trusted in their innovations and perfected the tech before anyone else could. Show the world just how great they were!
The U12+ has a host of new features that I’m sure many people would find interesting, such as dual front facing cameras, a “one handed mode” gesture and audio and zoom optimisation from the dual rear cameras and 4 mics.
Meanwhile, their YouTube video showing these features has well under 100k views and isn’t even the pinned video on their channel!
Summary
I used to love HTC as I had faith in their tech and their love for the community, but I’ve grown to see that they don’t really care about what they do anymore.
Perhaps they’ve burnt out, or maybe they’ve just lost the faith, but either way, the lack of effort they’ve shown in marketing and in making a good standout product has damaged their business, shattered our trust and ultimately made it tough to continue being a fan.
The moral of this story? Learn your audience and cater to them. Embrace your differences and invest in marketing — regardless of how create your product/content is, we have to know it exists.
What a shame.
That’s all from today folks! Be sure to check out my storytelling masterclass on YouTube here! Hit follow if you found this interesting. Also thanks to anyone who’s made it this far, I hope this post was of use to someone. You’re the best!
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