HTC staff should “just quit”

Shona Ghosh Read more May 22, 2013

HTC staff would be “much happier” if they left, according to one former product manager who has urged his colleagues to quit the firm in the wake of yet more management exits.

“To all my friends still at HTC – just quit. Leave now. It’s tough to do, but you’ll be so much happier, I swear,” said former product strategy manager Eric Lin on Twitter.

That follows the departure of chief product officer, Kouji Kodera, along with three marketing execs and Lin himself, who left HTC to join Skype. A source speaking to The Verge described HTC as being in “utter freefall” after several consecutive quarters of falling profits and poor phone sales.

“Anyone who’s heard of them in Seattle doesn’t want to go work for them right now. They’re like T-Mobile two years ago,” said the source, in reference to T-Mobile USA’s decline after AT&T’s failed takeover attempts. “They’re in utter freefall.”

HTC had pinned its turnaround hopes on the HTC One, which launched in the UK in April to positive reviews, but it isn’t clear yet whether sales will be strong enough to stave off competition from Samsung and Apple – and a Wall Street Journal report suggested that the phone’s production was delayed due to suppliers downgrading HTC from a ‘tier one’ manufacturer due to its past failures.

CEO Peter Chou has promised to quit if the One isn’t a success.

There’s also the rumoured demise of the new HTC First, the first smartphone to come with Facebook’s Home app pre-installed. Facebook scuppered any exclusivity by launching Home on Google’s app store days after the a phone arrived in the US, with the HTC First reportedly already on its way to being dropped after poor sales of fewer than 15,000 units.