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two months ago, some people said that they saw the last htc store closed and now it has become a fried dumpling shop, and lamented that it was really the tears of the times.

but htc itself responded immediately - fake news, this store is just one of our reseller stores, not a specialty store. (our own store has closed down a long time ago~~ however, our new mobile phone htc u24 pro is still on sale!)

oh, let me see.

snapdragon 7 gen 3, 4600mah, 12+256gb,sold for 4200 rmb!(for mobile phones at the same price, the configuration is basically one level higher than htc)

what we are saying is, if you sell mobile phones like this,maybe it’s better to let everyone remember an xin’s tears at that time.

htc has a very magical point. as the creator of the first android mobile phone and once the absolute leader in vr, it has been fooled twice and gained a huge first-mover advantage. however, it has been defeated twice by latecomers. stay on top.

if you go by intuition, it must be that you don't pay attention to research and development and are overtaken by your opponents, but it really isn't the case.

htc's r&d investment in 2012 was 3 billion, second only to tsmc in taiwan, and this scale continued until 2015.

although the numbers are not too big, htc's revenue in 2015 was only 27.3 billion, and r&d expenses accounted for 11% of its revenue. xiaomi's r&d investment in 2015 was only 1.5 billion, but it has already comprehensively surpassed htc.

therefore, htc's failure was not due to a lack of emphasis on r&d, but other reasons, and these reasons make me feel quite interesting.

hello everyone, today let us talk about why htc failed.

how successful was it back then?

in 1997, wang xuehong, the daughter of taiwan’s “god of management” wang yongqing, founded hongda electronics co., ltd.high tech computer, referred to as htc.

this company had a smooth start in its business. backed by taiwan's excellent industrial chain at the time, the pda products developed by htc soon gradually established its position in the market.

however, htc is not content with being just a foundry.

on may 8, 2007, htc announced that it would enter the field of independent mobile phones. just a year later, google announced its own version of android.htc keenly seized the opportunity and launched the world's first android phone, htc dream.

this phone sold 1.5 million units during the pre-sale period alone. even xiaomi's founder lei jun said: "the first thing i felt after using dream was that i wanted to make an android phone."

arrive 2011, htc's market value reached us$33.88 billion, exceeding nokia's market value of us$32.84 billion and rim's market value of us$28.5 billion.officially becoming the second largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world.

even in the united states, htc's market share defeated all competitors and became the number one in the market.

the first failure——

patent war

but after several years of smooth sailing for htc, its weaknesses were quickly discovered by its rivals. in march 2010, apple formally filed a lawsuit against htc for mobile phone infringement with the u.s. international trade commission, stating that htc had infringed on 20 of its patents and requested that htc be banned from sale in the united states.

this method is not new. patent wars have actually been the norm in the technology industry. these technology companies often fight over patents. xiaomi has also suffered losses in this regard, but in the end it managed to survive.

but this move hits htc's weakness.

in order to avoid patent issues, larger mobile phone manufacturers generally have their own patent mining teams, and when selling, they will learn more about mobile phone patent registrations in the local market to avoid being sued for infringement.

however, htc has no sense of prevention at all, it did not have enough patent reserves, did not conduct detailed inspections of overseas markets, and did not train a patent mining team. it only saw that in europe and the united states, "people are stupid and money comes quickly," and fell into the pit.

faced with patent attacks from major manufacturers, htc responded hastily.of course, this patent war ended in htc's failure.

at the end of 2011, htc lost the lawsuit and was found to have infringed apple's patent no. 647. the united states decided to impose an import ban on some of htc's smartphones. from october of this year to march 2012, htc's market share shrank by 60%, while samsung and other companies quickly eroded the market that htc originally occupied.

however this is not the end.

seeing apple's success, other european and american giants followed suit and sued htc for infringement. all of a sudden, htc was besieged on all sides in the international market. at that time, htc had to pay us$50-70 in patent fees for every mobile phone sold in the european and american markets.

by 2013,in just two years, htc's market share has plummeted, from second place in the world to falling out of the top ten.

mobile phone market share in 2013

in fact, logically speaking, htc should have been able to predict this problem in advance.because this is not the first time htc founder wang xuehong has encountered this problem.

many people don't know that in the 1990s, there was a company called china chip, which was once the third largest x86 chip company in the world. its name was via electronics.

the founder of via electronics is also wang xuehong.

this company is not only the third largest x86 chip company in the world, it even once accounted for more than 70% of the global chipset market, almost monopolizing the chipset market.

in addition to chipsets and cpus, via even has the ability to independently develop various chips such as gpu, cdma, usb, sound cards, network cards, etc. there are very few manufacturers in the world that can do this.

because of this, in intel's eyes, via is a more formidable enemy than amd. for this reason, intel launched a vigorous patent war against it.

after being strangled, via plummeted. fortunately, the shanghai municipal government gave it a helping hand and established a joint venture company called zhaoxin.

and even if the current zhaoxin and via are added together, there is no way to compare with the via back then.

it is indeed a bit incredible that wang xuehong suffered the same losses in both companies, and both were hurt to the core.

lack of brand concept

after two years of patent wars, htc has almost no such person in the european and american markets. at the same time, the mainland's smartphone market is experiencing the innovative trend of 4g communication networks, followed by a wave of mobile phone replacements.

anyone with a discerning eye can see that at this time, the mainland market has become the last life-saving straw for htc. so, htc should embrace the mainland, right?

but htc said:hugged, but only a little.

"quietly brilliant" is like a magic spell, htc stubbornly positions its brand as the "king of high-end phones" and wants to re-enter the european and american markets. however, it does not pay enough attention to the mainland market. it can even be said that there is a kind of unfounded arrogance.

regarding its own mobile phone products, xiaomi released a smartphone priced at only 1,999 yuan as early as 2011.

by 2013, domestic mobile phone brands have blossomed everywhere, and various manufacturers are crazy about cost-effectiveness. however, at this time, htc made a desperate decision and decided to focus on a high-end mobile phone, the m7, which sells for more than 3,000 yuan in mainland china and has higher configurations. the hong kong version was priced at hk$5,698, which was approximately rmb 4,545 at the time.

the 2014 m8 was priced at 5,299 yuan, which is not a small amount even today. while expensive, the quality of several htc mobile phones was also poor. they had problems one after another. they were high-priced and low-profile, and they were widely criticized for a while.

after the mainland market was cold, htc felt that there were some problems with its brand strategy. in fact, this perception was not entirely wrong, because htc did have big problems in marketing.

at that time, in the mainland mobile phone market, the popular offline mobile phone store model was popular. however, when htc entered the mainland market, it was already following the old model from the european and american markets, that is, cooperating with telecom operators, bundling sales, and launching customized mobile phone,little did they know that this practice has been eliminated in mainland china.

at that time, in order to seize the mainland's mobile phone market, samsung specially formed an offline direct sales team of more than 10,000 people, striving to run this set of business processes smoothly.

as for htc, you can't say that it has no commercial sensitivity at all, but in the end it only formed a small team of more than a thousand people and was unwilling to increase cost investment. the final result is that although advertisements are flying all over the place, in the superstars like leehom wang were invited to endorse the mobile phone launch, but consumers had no idea where to buy mobile phones.

on the other hand, htc’s taiwanese executives are not so much unfamiliar with the mainland’s consumer groups.rather, it's a lack of respect.

at that time, social media such as weibo had been fully launched, and most companies would interact with consumers on social media, which not only shortened the distance between the two parties, but also obtained first-hand market feedback.

but htc did not do this. it always maintained a cold image. more importantly, many consumers had no way to protect their rights after problems with their mobile phones. they wanted repairs. there was no news for months, and they did not know where to complain. where to complain.

htc's taiwanese executives ignored the suggestions made by many mainland employees and did not respond at all.

the most bizarre thing is htc's product strategy. whether it's apple or samsung, they all have their own clear market positioning, and they must at least have a name for consumers to understand.

but htc, in 2012 alone, htc released 12 mobile phones. each of these mobile phones has its own new name. there are 4 models in the one series alone. and these mobile phones have a lot of self-defeating phenomena. consumers it’s really hard to understand the difference between it and butterfly in terms of positioning.

htc did not guide consumers and left the difficult choice to consumers.the result of having too many choices is that you have no choice. even if people can accept your pricing, they will eventually be confused and choose samsung and apple.

perhaps it is because of this failure that htc changed its strategy in 2013 and focused on one mobile phone.but this kind of luck-based decision-making will naturally only lead to another failure.

the product positioning is vague, the price is too high, the after-sales service is poor, and the marketing plan is confusing.when these things are put together, you can feel that htc has no idea how to build a brand. when your research and development is not to serve consumers, the result is that the more research and development, the more investment, the more losses and the slower it becomes.

the mobile phone industry is highly related to the supply chain. when you develop rapidly, all the supply chains are willing to fully support it. but when you decline, you will enter a death spiral and eventually lead to your own death.

in 2017, htc sold its mobile phone business and announced that it would be all in vr. in 2019, htc quietly closed its official tmall and jd flagship stores.

this taiwanese mobile phone brand, which once dominated samsung and apple, has withdrawn from the market.

in general

as for the failure of branding and marketing, it is actually a problem for many taiwanese companies. another former giantacer, also like htc, stepped out of the oem industry and wanted to create their own brand. they may have been very capable at the beginning and knew how to innovate, but they lost on the brand.

many people think that as long as a company puts all its thoughts on research and development and its technology is strong enough, it can crush everything.

this logic may hold true in oem companies, as long as your quality is better than others. but when you want to be a direct-to-consumer brand, knowing these is not enough.

markets and brands are by no means just some advertising words or a beautiful logo.respect the market, know how to communicate with consumers, and find their real needs.these things may sound simpler than developing cutting-edge chips, but many companies just can't do it well. when your r&d is divorced from consumer needs, what is the meaning of r&d?

find the needs of consumers, understand the market, guide your research and development, guide your production and after-sales, and a series of other things.this is the core combat capability of a consumer electronics company.

it's a pity that htc didn't learn.

write an article:distance edit：dan biliduo& enchantment& xiao xinxin