After suspending local manufacturing units almost a year ago, the Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturer HTC is apparently winding up its marketing operations in India. Although it won’t have any physical or offline operations or stores, it will continue to deal with smartphones via online stores until the stock lasts and all the operations will be controlled directly from Taiwan.
HTC has been cutting back on the employee count both in India as well as in Taiwan. It curtailed one-fifth of its workforce back in Taiwan and while in India, it will soon wrap up its operations and has already asked the employees to leave. HTC will leave a skeletal office in India with not more than 10 employees until all the operations are shifted to Taiwan.
It started some time ago when HTC stated that it will quit soon. Then, few of the top management employees such as Faisal Siddiqui (Country Head), R Nayyar (Product Head) and Vijay Balachandran (Sales Head) among others resigned from their respective post recently. HTC has contracted several distributors and has other commercial agreements that it will have to resolve before the operations are totally stopped.
MPS Telecom and Link Telecom are one of the biggest nationwide distributors to HTC to which, the smartphone brand will have to clear all the dues. Although all HTC smartphones will be discontinued for sales after the available stocks end, the company will continue to sell its virtual reality products i.e. HTC VIVE and VIVE Pro.
The reason behind closing all-India operations is because HTC is struggling to sell its smartphones in India as well as global markets where it saw a decline of 68% in sales on a year-to-year basis as of June 2018. As it usually deals with flagship smartphones with a price tag around 30,000 INR, the segment is now dominated by Apple and Samsung whereas the affordable smartphone segment is dominated by other Chinese manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and others. HTC claimed that its smartphone products weren’t in any segment (that could sell) due to the increasing prices of its smartphones more than what people are willing to pay.
HTC has a market share of less than 1% in India and has been struggling to stay in the market for a few years now. HTC has stated that once it is able to draw itself out of a tough phase, it will return to the Indian market via online stores in the future if all goes well. Firstly, it will manage the sales via online portals as no offline sales will be attempted as of now. Once the premium brand is able to set foot in the Indian market, it might come with offline stores and more.
