HTC has just announced that it's going to lay off 1,500 employees at its Taiwanese manufacturing division as part of a bigger attempt to remain profitable. This represents nearly a quarter of the company's overall workforce.
Just five years ago, in 2013, HTC employed 19,000 people. After the layoffs, this will shrink to just less than 5,000.
TechCrunch has now declared that the company is dead, although HTC will likely continue trying to stay afloat.
As for the employees who will be laid off, officials said they'll work with the country's Bureau of Labor to help all those affected, Reuters reports.
HTC IS Laying Off A Lot Of Employees To Stay Afloat
The job cuts are a major symptom of the company's decline. Once upon a time, HTC sold one in 10 smartphones globally, but its market share has dipped significantly over the years amid tough competition from the likes of Apple, Samsung, and other smartphone companies.
"This plan will allow more effective and flexible resource management going forward," said HTC.
Corporate reorganizations are common within HTC, and in fact, it's still trying to work out the kinks from a previous shuffle earlier this year. Shortly after the president of the company's mobile division resigned, HTC decided to merge its smartphone and virtual reality departments into one.
In all, it's not looking pretty for HTC at the moment. It still releases flagship phones, but its latest, the U12 Plus, didn't really win critics over. Its Vive Pro isn't doing any better either. While it has received plenty of praise, the cost and lack of accessories have drawn ire from the gaming community.
The future of the company's mobile business remains largely uncertain, so much so that last year it sold its entire Pixel team to Google for $1 billion. That helped free up nearly 2,000 employees from the payroll, but at the same time, it also meant that it handed the best and brightest of its mobile division for Google to leverage.
Is This The End For HTC?
It's quite unfortunate that this is happening to HTC now, but users saw similar stories unfold before. BlackBerry and Nokia, for starters, were once legendary in the smartphone market but were later reduced to mere branding: BlackBerry was bought by TCL, and Nokia was bought by HMD. Both acquirers just use their branding now.
That said, it's clear that HTC is not giving up without a fight. One can't help but wonder, however, how long it'll take before the company throws in the towel.
Miracles always happen, though, and Silicon Valley is a highly unstable landscape filled with disruptors. Who knows? Perhaps Apple might not even be producing iPhones 10 years down the road.
