A long time ago, Yu Chengdong said that there will eventually be only three mobile phone manufacturers left in China, and now it seems that although this sentence is exaggerated, it is slowly coming true, as far as brand influence is concerned, there are not many domestic mobile phone brands that are really influential, just like Nubia and Meizu when counting the market share, they may even be placed in the "other" together statistics. Recently, a mobile phone brand has completely withdrawn from the Chinese mainland, which is the former Android machine emperor HTC.
Although HTC has not released a new model in the mainland for a long time, it still has a product introduction of mobile phones on its official website before, but not long ago, even its official website also removed all mobile phone related pages, which can be said to be a complete withdrawal from the mainland market. However, although its mobile phone business is already yesterday's yellow flower, from the current state of its official website, we can also see that HTC has embarked on a new direction.
Backed by Microsoft Google, the first Android phone was released
HTC can be called the Android king, and a big reason is because it started early. As early as 1997, HTC's parent company, Hongda Electronics, was already doing OEM work for mobile phone manufacturers, and at that time, its domestic company name was still called Dopod, and its identity status was like Foxconn now. Until 2002, Microsoft released the first generation of mobile operating system, Dopod took this opportunity to develop pad Phone, which is what we often call a side slide cover full keyboard mobile phone.
The emergence of pad phones has raised HTC's status and become the darling of a number of European mobile phone manufacturers, and later Nokia N97 and a number of BlackBerry full-keypad phones have been affected by this. But even so, HTC still can't get rid of the identity of the foundry, after all, in that era, Nokia alone has occupied half of the mobile phone industry, followed by Brands such as Motorola Samsung.
If there is no major change in the industry, it is difficult for other mobile phone manufacturers to share the cake. However, within a few years, the industry change that HTC was waiting for came, that is, the emergence of the Android system. In 2008, HTC cooperated with Google to develop the first Android phone HTC G1, becoming the first person to eat crab on an Android phone, and it is precisely because of this that HTC has the opportunity to really show its hands in the mobile phone industry.
Inspired Lei Jun to found Xiaomi, the patent dispute fell to the altar
Before the advent of Android phones, the market can most challenge nokia status of Apple, and the emergence of Android phones, is undoubtedly to give Nokia the most deadly knife, HTC in 2008 released the first Android phone, to around 2010, Nokia has not been popular, Lei Jun said at an entrepreneurial annual meeting, when he used up HTC G1, feel that a new era has begun, which is also the source of power for him to later create a team to do MIUI and develop Xiaomi mobile phones.
If Android is the bomb that triggered the reform of the mobile phone industry, then HTC must be the fuse. In the third quarter of 2011, HTC even surpassed Samsung and Apple to become the north American mobile phone sales champion, with 5.7 million units sold in a single quarter. The market capitalization is also as high as $33.8 billion. However, HTC's heyday did not last long, and when the domestic millet and Meizu began to exert their strength, HTC's market competitiveness began to decline.
The appearance of the use of 10,000 years of unchanged three chin design, the price and Samsung Apple is on par with, while there is no core competitiveness, and Apple, Samsung, Nokia patent disputes continue, resulting in being banned in many places, is the main reason for HTC's failure in the mobile phone market, to the fourth quarter of 2012, HTC global sales ranking has fallen out of the top ten, and then it has been mistaken for having collapsed.
Full force into the VR industry, once the first but not against Facebook
Just when people mistakenly thought that it had gone out of business, HTC was actually secretly transforming, and the direction of transformation was VR. In order to transform, HTC can be said to have made a bloody investment, in 2016, it sold its factory in Shanghai in exchange for 630 million yuan, and in 2017, it sold the core business unit of the smartphone Pixel to Google for $1.1 billion. The funds exchanged for these two transactions were unsurprisingly invested in the research and development of VR hardware and software.
Perhaps it is the kung fu that pays off, HTC, which has suffered setbacks in the mobile phone market, has finally made new achievements in the VR market. At one point, the domestic VR market once became the first in the market with a proportion of 18%. However, even if HTC has been pinned high hopes, now it seems that its development in the VR market is not smooth sailing, according to the statistics of the world's largest game platform Steam, the consumer market, HTC's market share is only 12.48%, while Facebook's parent company Meta accounted for up to 63.58%.
This time HTC will be on the official website of the mobile phone related information all removed, it can be said that it is a step closer to fully entering the VR market, and now the hyped meta-universe atmosphere will also bring new growth to the VR market, but whether HTC can finally regain the status of the original Android machine king with VR, we still do not know.