Sam Oliver
Taiwanese gadget maker HTC, once one of the biggest names in the smartphone market, is now considered essentially worthless by investors as its market value fell below its cash on hand during Monday trading.
HTC stock bottomed out at NT$56.80 ($1.80) per share on Monday — Â eventually closing at NT$57.50 — while the company holds NT$57 per share in cash. In effect, this means that investors do not believe HTC has any intrinsic value as a going concern.
The plunge was first noted by Bloomberg.
Despite garnering generally favorable reviews for its handsets, such as its current flagship One M9, HTC has found itself unable to fend off competition from Apple and Samsung at the high end and cheap Chinese brands at the low end. A recent expansion of its product line — Â with the release of the handheld Re camera — Â and an executive shakeup that saw cofounder Cher Wang take the reins as CEO have not been enough to convince investors that the company can be salvaged.
With HTC in seemingly dire straits after warning investors of continued losses in its third fiscal quarter, layoffs and cost-cutting have become the order of the day.
"The cuts will be across the board," HTC CFO Chialin Chang told Reuters last week. "They will be significant."
Some have also suggested that its weakened financial position may make HTC a prime acquisition target, though the company's largest asset — Â its brand — Â has also lost its luster. Earlier this year, HTC's smartphone market share was estimated to have fallen below 2 percent globally.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Sponsored Content
118 Comments
HTC and every other Android manufacturer deserves to lie in the bed they've made. Stagefright is just the latest and biggest torpedo to slam into the hulls of sinking Android ships. https://torusoft.com/blog/persona-non-grata
Microsoft should buy them. /s?
Up next: Xiaomi.
How can we spin this as a negative for Apple. Ooo: Could HTC be the harbinger of Apple's decline? I had an HTC phone. It was nice but Android ruined the experience.
Android is a sham of an OS. That's a given. That being said, if I ever received blunt-force-trauma to the head, I would have considered HTC. With all the iPhone clones being cranked-out by Samsung and Xiaomi, at least HTC "tried" to differentiate itself so I have to at least give them credit for that.
Xiaomi and Samsung would be my dream-list of "former" phone-manufacturers. With Xiaomi being in bed with the Chinese government, I don't see them being left out on the vine to rot anytime soon.