Warning bells appear to be going off at HTC. A report indicates that the company has laid off a large number of staff at its US office, leaving only personnel to oversee the HTC Global side of operations.
There’s no confirmation on how many people were let go, with expectations ranging between a few dozen to maybe a hundred or so. However, it is certain that people were asked to leave the company; tweets from several former employees and HTC USA confirm that much.
“Today, we announced a restructure in North America for the HTC smartphone business that will centralize the reporting structure within the region. In doing so, there have been some employee reductions to align the businesses and empower the teams to share more resources,” HTC told Digital Trends, who had originally broke the story.
This apparent restructure comes only a week after HTC’s president of smartphone and connected devices, Chailin Chang, announced his resignation.
HTC is not necessarily a sinking ship. The company still has substantial funds from the sale of a portion of its smartphone division to Google. Funds that it has not yet directed in any meaningful way.
That said, the future of the company is extremely uncertain. It’s expected to move in the direction of virtual reality headsets, seeing that it is one of the leading manufacturers in that space with the Vive. In comparison, the smartphone division has been struggling to turn a profit.
[Source: Digital Trends]
