HTC’s mobile division has been on a downward path for the past few years, and while the Taiwanese firm shows no sign of recovery soon, it has since soldiered on till now. While the brand is reportedly mulling over licensing its brand name to other smartphone brands in a similar manner to what Nokia and Blackberry did, a new report from China suggests the firm9(HTC) could be on the verge of exiting the Chinese number smartphones market -China.
While there is no official statement confirming same, the brand has effectively ceased selling its smartphones on Chinas top two online retail stores – TMall and Jingdong (better known as JD.com), making it seemingly difficult for its fans in the country to get hold of new HTC devices.
Although the company via a Weibo announcement confirmed that it will continue selling its devices on the official HTC online store still has its smartphones listed, and consumers can still visit its physical store in Shenzhen. However, some of its most recent phones are listed as “Out of Stock.”
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While we are not sure what prompted HTCs decision to pull its devices out of Chinas leading online stores, speculations are that it may be one of its attempt to maximize profit – by a way of not giving a cut of its profits to third-party shops — but that would be a strange move considering its major releases aren’t available via its own shop. Another possible reason could be that the firm is mulling pulling out of the Chinese or the entire smartphone market, that could be far from the real deal given that the company recently confirmed it has plans to launch the 5G Mobile Smart Hub as well as a second-generation Exodus smartphone.
The latest move is the second of such suspicious moves from the Taiwanese firm this year that suggests it could be considering exiting the smartphone business. First, the firm has expunged 14 self-developed applications for mobile phone from the Play Store since February 2019. These apps include Sense launcher, HTC calendar, HTC mail, HTC contacts and so on, leaving only a handful of apps related to Vive.
There could be some untold reason for these moves, whatever the case may be, we would have to see how the scene unfolds.
