It is the former glory of domestic cell phones, leading the trend by virtue of the three-section design, but now it is gradually marginalized.
What comes to your mind when you mention HTC. The world's first Android phone, the world's first dual-camera phone, the three-section design on the back that made Apple follow suit, or the cell phone brand that it once stood at the top and became second only to Apple in terms of market value.
However, for HTC, everything is like a dream, they quickly take off, but also due to a number of factors quickly fall, fell out of the top ten list of cell phone brands, ranked 15th in the top 100 ranking APP cell phone list.
Touch Quality, Discover the Future, Watch 100,000 Brand Stories of "HTC: Past Glory" Now
In 1997 before the introduction of Android smart phones, the daughter of Taiwan's goddess of business Wang Xuehong, Zhuo Huotu and Zhou Yongming joined nine engineers in Taiwan to found HTC Electronics (HTC), until the cooperation with Compaq to develop ipaq, the world's most powerful PDA in the Guinness Book of Records, gradually became an internationally renowned cell phone OEM, providing cell phone design and production services for major operators in Europe and the United States.
In 2002, HTC Electronics and VIA Electronics jointly funded the establishment of Dopod, the predecessor of HTC cell phones. The company's main business was the design as well as marketing of cell phones, and after obtaining the license, it launched the early smartphone PDA Phone along with the trend.
In the era when everyone was holding a feature phone, the PDA phone made Dopod a lot of fans.
In 2006, the partnership in the OEM business broke down, so Wang Xuehong, who was not interested in this, started to establish his own brand.
The following year, HTC acquired Doppler and launched Touch Diaond, the first smartphone with HTC's logo, in June.
In 2008, HTC, which joined the Open Handset Alliance led by Google, launched the world's first Android phone, the G1 (HTC dream).
Since then, HTC has ushered in its most glorious period.
However, it is slightly regrettable that HTC's peak period is too short, that is, after 2011, HTC because of the popularity of Android, Samsung's later rise to the top and Apple's lawsuit against HTC made HTC a flop, towards the margins.
At that time, after developing the G1, HTC launched a more difficult challenge while other manufacturers were joining the Android camp.
In 2009, sense UI came out of nowhere, customizing UI to provide consumers with an alternative to Google's native Android system.
In the same year, the G3 (HTC hero), which has a chin, also became the classic design of HTC.
For mobile enthusiasts, HTC also launched the king of brushes that year, the HTC HD2, which was also able to be bricked into Android 7.0 back in 2016.
In 2010, HTC made a fortune with its first smartphone Nexus one and its own phone G7 (HTC desire), which were OEM'd for Google, and has been coming out with impressive designs ever since.
For example, in 2011, the industry's only naked eye 3D technology (HTC EVO 3D) and HTC one S, which set a new milestone in cell phone technology.
In addition to this, HTC acquired a majority stake in Beats in 2011.
As a direct result, for a long time, some consumers treated HTC phones equipped with Beats Audio as real music phones.
It can be said that at that time HTC, not only is the representative of technology, but also the representative of the trend.
Between 2008 and 2012, HTC released a total of 50 cell phones, including WM system phones, and this competitive betting strategy made them lucky to win the lottery, but also laid the groundwork for the subsequent decline.
After the end of the G-series phones, HTC, which crushed Samsung Apple's shipments in the U.S. market, swelled up and began to position itself as the industry's leading smartphone maker.
In order to capture the quad-core flagship market, it took the risk of launching the HTC one X in 2012 with the NVIDIA CPUTegra 3, which had been exposed to many problems earlier.
As a result, poor compatibility, poor battery life, poor heat dissipation and other problems led to one X even play a small game are stuck, so HTC suffered a decline in profits for six consecutive quarters.
After that, they combined one S and one X, and then with the accumulated black technology before, launched HTC one M7 in 2013, which intended to sweep the decline.
In terms of design, the M7, with its integrated metal body and three-section design on the back, has led countless competitors, including Apple, to imitate it later.
But quality control and HTC is proud of, but consumers are confused Ultrapixel camera, but become two extremely fatal problems. Plus a later system update caused the M7 to take pictures that would glow red and purple, and sales hit rock bottom.
In the same year, HTC's chief industrial designer Chih-Lin Kan was arrested by the judiciary for disclosing trade secrets.
Subsequently, HTC chief marketing officer, former chief financial officer, chief operating officer, chief product officer global public relations director vice president, global retail marketing manager, product strategy manager and other senior executives have left one after another.
In 2014, the backwater HTC made a comeback with the launch of the world's first dual-camera smartphone M8, which finally paid off. In the second quarter of 2014, HTC's sales exceeded 2.2 billion with the M8 and the help of the desire 816, the top seller in the same price range in the mainland market that year
But all this has not been able to reverse HTC's decline since 2011.
In 2015, HTC released M9, because that year Qualcomm 810 processor heat serious, HTC used MediaTek's chip, but the phone price positioning 4000 +, coupled with stagnant design, so that the majority of consumers are dissatisfied, and ultimately in the Samsung S6, the reflection of the eclipse.
The company has been forced to lose the high-end machine market, low-end machine can not break a wrist with other domestic manufacturers, HTC transformation to take the mid-range route. the end of 2015, HTC launched HTC one A9, with good sales for the company brought earnings growth.
But because of the cool Apple iphone 6s design, so that the original design proud of HTC completely lost the previous magic.
In 2016, consecutive years of losses, the stock price collapse of HTC in order to seek change, the launch of HTC 10, this time, HTC finally gave up the previous people criticized the multiple chin, after adding the home button overall design simple and beautiful, and with the current flagship phone configuration.
But it is a phone that seems to have no problem to finally make the company profitable, once again making a mistake that consumers will never tolerate.
That is, the national version of the phone configuration shrinkage, despite the price cut, but this discriminatory sales policy makes HTC 10 in the three e-commerce platform shipments, it is difficult to break through 10,000 units.
Throughout 2016, HTC net loss of $340 million, seven consecutive quarters of losses, total shipments less than Xiaomi, Huawei a quarter, falling down the global top ten list.
At this point in time, the company's 20th anniversary, HTC said it would abandon the low-end market and continue to develop high-end flagships, and under such a policy, the new U series flagship was born.
As the opening work of 2017, HTC U ultra has poured almost all of HTC's efforts and changes, it completely abandoned the previous metal body and three-section design from the design, adding a dual-screen design that can be lit separately.
For system stability, it is not paired with the latest Snapdragon 835 processor, but with the Snapdragon 821.
This left the HTC U ultra, priced at 5088 yuan, out in the cold, and the successor, the HTC U11, was released with a price cut to 2000 yuan.
On the day of the company's official 20th anniversary, the HTC U11, released on May 16, 2017, beat the Iphone7 plus to top the throne with its superb score and had the best photo function at the time.
Together with the pressure-sensing function based on the lower and middle bezels, it becomes HTC's long-awaited turnaround. Let lost for too long HTC, in June after a surge in revenue, see a glimmer of hope.
However, it is clear that the U11, which is seen as sweeping away the gloom, is still unable to save the day, and there are even rumors that HTC's cell phone business will be sold to Google.
On September 21, 2017, Google and HTC, who had previously been OEM for them, officially reached a cooperation agreement to acquire the HTC pixel cell phone division for $1.1 billion, without affecting HTC's own flagship afterwards.
In the first half of 2018, the HTC U12+, the world's first phone without physical buttons, was released, it has the best screen since Iphone8, but in front of the domestic ROMs represented by MIUI / Flyme, the U12+ equipped with ChinaSense 9.0 is like an old car on the track.
But despite this, the U12+ still does not fall short compared to flagships of other brands, but the pricing of 5888 still makes it difficult for many consumers to accept.
It's not that I don't understand, it's that the world is changing fast.
Under the rules set by more powerful rivals, there will always be a part of the business is doomed to be eliminated, in the increasingly competitive market, cell phone prices remain high, did not find their own accurate positioning of HTC, finally finally and its predecessors, only in the collapse of the time, looking back on the past glory.
