How ineffective marketing contributed to HTC's ultimate destruction in the mobile industry

It took hundreds of millions of years for dinosaurs to evolve, but only a few moments for their destruction. HTC’s story is very similar to that of dinosaurs.

HTC was the first brand to have a global hit with Android smartphones. However, their success did not last as long as they may have expected. At its peak in April 2011, the company’s shares held a considerably high value of NT$1,300 per share. By 2015, all HTC’s shares were valued under a mere 1.25 Billion US Dollars. Researches make it clear that HTC had reached its peak way before the mobile industry did.

So you might be wondering, what’s the matter if HTC reached its peak before the mobile industry?

Here’s a practical example to answer that question. Multiple cameras and portrait mode are quite a big hype these days, but the HTC One flexed these features way before these trends came to life in 2014. Their smartphones had the ultra-cool features long before the mobile industry was really a matter of concern to the public. They had the ‘cool’ ideas, but they just couldn’t turn them into trends. In other words, they failed in marketing.

At a time when Apple and Samsung were making ad campaigns against each other and kicking off the well-aged Samsung vs Apple and Android vs iOS wars, HTC was following their slogan:

For them, being quietly brilliant meant not exclusively advertising or bragging about their products. Unfortunately for HTC, their slogan wouldn’t really fit in a highly competitive industry occupied by rivals eagerly waiting to pounce on larger market share. When they did finally start ad campaigns against Apple and Samsung however, it turned out being bizarre and lame.

Another issue with HTC smartphones were the names they were given. Competitors like Samsung used effective strategies to name their devices. For example, high-end devices were named under the S – series and lower-end devices were named under the A-series. Cleverly naming their products gave Samsung the upper hand since doing so made it easier for customers to know the class of devices they were getting their hands on, although they may not have been tech enthusiasts. HTC on the other hand was producing hundreds of devices a year and giving them rather bizarre names such as the HTC Salsa and HTC Chacha. This made it almost impossible for customers which of HTC’s devices were meant to be premium, mid-range, and budget range in the sea of diverse smartphones they had to offer. 

The lesson to be learned: If you forget marketing, the market will forget you.

Shortly after, it was clear that HTC’s glory days were coming to an end as stock prices fell by 75 per cent in just 5 years. Marketing may have been the company’s weakness, but they sure did well with design as their devices looked beautiful, sleek and premium. Google was smart enough to realise this and they bought over 2000 employees from HTC’s design team. The design team went on to design Google’s Pixel line up, and this was a revolutionary success for Google as it was the first time, they started manufacturing smartphones independently.

HTC’s last mobile phone was released 2 years ago in 2018. This may be their last mobile phone ever or at least for quite a while. Although the good old days of seeing HTCs and Nokias dominating the mobile industry are gone, they leave us with a key lesson:

Being the first to innovate something does not guarantee eternal or even long term success.

If you are interested in business content, it would be really cool if you could refer to the documents I occasionally upload on my LinkedIn page. It should be helpful for students :)