Taiwan smartphone maker HTC to lay off 1,500 workers amid losses

Smartphone maker HTC plans to slash around a quarter of its global workforce which is about 1,500 jobs at its manufacturing unit in Taiwan.

The job cuts come as the Taiwanese smartphone maker continues to battle dwindling sales.

The company said in a statement, “Today HTC announces plan to optimize the manufacturing organizations in Taiwan. This plan will allow more effective and flexible resource management going forward.”

The job cuts indicate that losses continue at the struggling Taiwanese mobile phone maker that once sold one in 10 smartphones globally, but has now seen its market share decline amid mounting competition from Apple, Samsung, and Chinese rivals.

 HTC said it would cut 1,500 jobs in its manufacturing unit in Taiwan. This represents about a quarter of the 6,450 staff it employed globally as of June employee data from the company. The layoffs will be completed by the end of September. 

The announcement of the cuts comes despite a new $1.1 Bn deal with Google last year, completed in January, which boosted HTC's first quarter performance after a dismal 2017. Under the deal, HTC shifted around 2,000 staff, mainly handset engineers, to Alphabet’s Google, raising doubts about its long-term future.

HTC’s scaling down comes amid a decline in its revenues and sales. The company reported a 55.5 percent plunge in April revenues year-on-year and a 46.7 percent slide in March sales. In 2015, the company cut more than 2,000 jobs, slashing its workforce by 15 percent after posting its then-biggest ever quarterly loss of TWD $8.0 Bn. In 2017, It incurred a net loss of  TWD $16.91  Bn in 2017 

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