Headquartered in Taiwan's New Taip City, HTC may be a long-standing brand for the smartphone market for some time, but the company is just over 20 years old. Founded with the goal of manufacturing semiconductors, touchscreen displays, mobile phones and later smartphones, the Taiwanese company has already been in the top five of the top selling smartphone brands in Brazil.
It turns out that HTC left the country at a time not glamorous for the company, with 57.8% drop in global revenue and less than 0.11% share in the Brazilian market, behind giants such as Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Nokia. . The market was different in 2012, in many ways, as we had more operating systems circulating across retail shelves, such as Symbian, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone (in addition to Windows Mobile).
HTC was a brand that sold Android products in various markets, but due to an exclusive partnership with Microsoft, the handsets that the company sold here used to run on Windows Phone and Mobile, as well as having intermediate hardware.
HTC Ultimate, the last
It was with this system, including, that the brand made its last tupiniquim release, with HTC Ultimate. This device was considered quite expensive at the time, costing $ 1,800, and was responsible for the commercial debut of Windows 7.5 Mango, considered the version that separated the old Windows Mobile from then new platform that promised to face iOS and Android.
Despite its prestigious role, the HTC Ultimate was a real sales flop, mainly because it cost almost the same as a Galaxy S2, a fuller device that came with a better application and service ecosystem. . The fact that Microsoft did not upgrade it to Windows Phone 8 was also something that negatively marked the phone's reputation, as this information was released shortly after its release.
HTC arrived in Brazil in 2007 with local investments totaling $ 10 million. The goal was to manufacture the appliances in the country, with some government subsidies at the time. The first national models were ready in 2008, and at the disposal of the users there were 10 models of the brand running on Windows Mobile, the first of them being the HTC Touch, the newcomer that arrived by import and then started to be produced in Manaus Free Zone.
HTC do Brasil's exit did not happen overnight, as the company was giving clear signs that it was experiencing problems globally. In 2010 Brazilian production was closed, the factory sold and marketing investments suspended. To give you an idea, the disclosure of HTC Ultimate was minimal, being the biggest spreader of the release at the time the operator Vivo, who tried to sell it with exclusive discounts for postpaid customers, also without much success.
HTC U12 Plus one of the last launches of the brand / AndroidPIT by Irina Efremova
In 2011 alone, HTC fluctuated between 0.11% and 0.3% in Brazil. After-sales support for the launched products continued for a few more years, while brand sales around the world were bitter. Here is the honorable mention Google, which was the company that kept HTC in evidence in its worst years thanks to a partnership in building smartphones and tablets from the Nexus and Pixel series. In 2017, Google bought HTC's smartphone factory for $ 1.1 billion.
Losing at home
Out of the top 10 global bestselling smartphone brands since 2016, HTC still retains part of its prestige in its home country. In Taiwan, between January and October this year, the manufacturer was present in 7.3% of active handsets per l, behind only Apple, Samsung and Oppo.
Although it was passed by a Chinese woman at home, HTC's biggest problem today is Asus's breakthrough, which in this same period was present in 6.96% of active handsets, according to data from StatCounter, which measures internet access by browsers installed on smartphones.
However, Oppo, which continues to advance in line with the global market trend, will be a matter of time for the two to separate further into absolute sales figures. The rival in this scenario will be Asus.
That was close
Before leaving Brazil, HTC approved with Anatel the models One S (image above) and One X, which were never released in the country. Both models had been presented at MWC 2012 in Barcelona, ​​and were the most advanced options the company had running Android. Brazilian users would have a chance to experience, for the first time, a top-notch Taiwanese brand with Google's system, which did not happen.
Hardly, HTC would have gone far in Brazil with the sales strategy that the company has until today.
The company went out of its way and has since gone downhill in sales and profits. It cannot be said that this was a kind of Brazilian plague, because another manufacturer had to leave the country in a hurry and has grown since then. The manufacturer in question is Xiaomi, which will be the theme of our next special.
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