DailyTech - HTC Closes South Korean Office After Getting Obliterated in Local Sales

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Gadgets HTC Closes South Korean Office After Getting Obliterated in Local Sales
Jason Mick (Blog) - July 30, 2012 1:30 PM

20 comment(s) - last by bigboxes.. on Jul 31 at 9:07 AM

Office is third to be closed in last two months

Taiwan's HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) is one of the largest Android phonemakers in the world, but the company has fallen out of contention for the lead as the smartphone market has evolved into a "two-horse" race between South Korea's Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) and American device-maker Apple, Inc. (AAPL).

Amid falling profits HTC has been forced to make cuts. Today it announced one of those cuts -- the closure of its South Korean office.

HTC remains a player in the U.S. in terms of market share, but in South Korea it owns only a tiny 1 percent sliver of the market. That number is actually down from the 2 percent it held in the country last year.

Samsung obviously tops South Korean sales charts, but LG Electronics Inc. (KSC:066570) also has been doing well. And Pantech Comp., Ltd. has also proven an emerging threat on the market. Together LG, Samsung, and Pantech own 90 percent of South Korea's sales, with foreign handset makers like Apple eating up the remainder.

_{HTC has closed several offices as part of a downsizing plan. [Image Source: Reuters]}

HTC in June shuttered its Brazil office, another weak sales region. Like in South Korea, in Brazil HTC only held 1 percent of the market. HTC has encouraged employees from both offices to apply for a transfer to other regions.

Also in June HTC closed the doors of a research office in Durham, North Carolina, releasing approximately 50 employees.

The company has faced extra pressure in recent months from a weak Euro and from strong sales of Samsung's best-selling Galaxy S III smartphone, which launched in late June to international acclaim.

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RE: LG?

By Yongsta on 7/30/2012 4:02:01 PM , Rating: 2

LG has some pretty awesome phones in Korea that we don't have (LG Optimus 4x) also some phones where you can watch HDTV OTA, that technology isn't over here yet neither.

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RE: LG?

By wordsworm on 7/30/2012 7:27:53 PM , Rating: 2

Maybe 3-4 years ago, I remember getting the cheapest phone I could buy. You could watch TV on it without paying any fees. Meanwhile, here in O'Canaduh, they're only just now starting to put TV on smart phones at a steep price.

Anyways, I don't think it should be so surprising that HTC is failing in Korea. Koreans are very loyal to their own companies. They also seem to think highly of products made in the US. They openly hate everything Japanese (including people), so there's almost no competition from Japan on any front.

Having come back to Canaduh, I sometimes feel like a Jetson having gone to the world of the Flinstones. In so many ways Canaduh is so primitive.

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"So, I think the same thing of the music industry. They can't say that they're losing money, you know what I'm saying. They just probably don't have the same surplus that they had." -- Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA