She is a representative of Taiwan's industry. Her factory is the epitome of Taiwan's foundry.
At the beginning of this year, Taiwanese media reported that an investigation found that HTC International Electronics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as HTC) used interns (called Jianjiao students in Taiwanese media) as a substitute labor force to save 100 million yuan in salary costs every year. The media broke the news that HTC is suspected of treating interns as cheap substitute labor, allowing them to squeeze into a dormitory and only have a few minutes to eat, and also requires students to work long night shifts. In this regard, HTC stated in a statement that in recent years, internship salaries in Taiwan dollars (the same below) have been higher than those stipulated in the Labor Standards Act.
On March 1, HTC Chairman Wang Xuehong responded to the report, saying that the company’s student internship program is to allow interns to enter the company to learn vocational skills while they are in school. The manpower planning and execution plan of the program are both approved by Taiwan’s education department. Wang Xuehong emphasized that there is room for improvement in every place, but one must treat others with love, and love must be spread to everyone around at any time, not just to do a good job for oneself.
It is understood that HTC has been working hard on hot-selling mobile phones recently. HTC has rarely used interns to rush work in recent years. This is because Wang Xuehong suffered a lot due to her wrong market strategy. Data shows that the global market share of the HTC mobile phone brand fell to .% from .% the year before.
It is understood that HTC officially entered the Chinese market this year and its development trend has been upward. The first half of the year was even more prosperous, with both mobile phone sales and net profit rising steadily. However, judging from the financial report data, mobile phone shipments have continued to decline since the third quarter of this year and have been weak for two consecutive quarters. Shipments in the first quarter of this year were only .
What is even more ominous is that HTC's attention in the Chinese mobile phone market, its main battlefield for mobile phone consumption, has also shown a downward trend and the gap between it and Samsung, which ranks first, continues to widen. Statistics show that the brand received .% of the attention in 2016 and .% at its peak. The gap between the brand and its largest competitor Samsung has widened to .%. HTC's third-quarter financial report showed that the company achieved operating income of 100 million yuan in the quarter and net profit after tax of 100 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of %. The glorious years seem to have come to an end. Although the current sales of the brand's mobile phones are declining seriously, Wang Xuehong doesn't seem to care. After all, from the establishment of the brand to the present, Wang Xuehong is like a person who knows whether the water is warm or cold.
Information shows that HTC was founded in 2006 by Chairman Wang Xuehong, Director Zhuo Huotu, and General Manager and CEO Zhou Yongming. Since its establishment, HTC has always adopted an OEM model. It was not until 2000 that it began to embark on the road of branding.
In the ten years since Wang Xuehong founded HTC, she has been engaged in OEM production, assembling machines for giants around the world, and selling them under other people's brands. With the development of the enterprise, Wang Xuehong discovered that although every link from product development to molding contained HTC's innovation, as a manufacturer that transformed from product to product, when HTC wanted to express product innovation to customers, customers only wanted to talk about price. .
All good things in the world seem to happen by chance, and HTC is no exception. At the beginning of the year, Wang Xuehong was still helping Compaq develop smartphones. However, when the project was completed, there were changes within Compaq. HTC could only go to Europe to find telecom operators for cooperation. This product finally impressed British Telecom and became the beginning of close cooperation with many telecom operators.
Wang Xuehong’s team found that cooperating directly with telecom operators not only bypassed the middle link of mobile phone manufacturers and effectively reduced costs, but more importantly, as an OEM, HTC shared with telecom operators the value of different links in the industry chain. The existence of peer competition can pave the way for it to build its own brand. Wang Xuehong, who thought she was completely prepared, started her brand journey.
In 2016, the brand launched a mobile phone model with sales exceeding 10,000 units. Although there is a gap with the sales volume of 10,000 of the first generation that was later launched, it is obviously a success as the first machine after the launch of its own brand. One year after the transformation, HTC's foundry business continued to reduce gross profit but hit new highs repeatedly. Wang Xuehong's dream of own-brand mobile phones had a very good start.
Wang Xuehong has always focused on making high-quality smartphones as a selling point. Since the launch of her first mobile phone, she has been fortunate enough to become close partners with giants such as Microsoft and Google. Some media reported that Zhou Yongming, a member of Wang Xuehong's team, has a very good personal relationship with the project leader. Before the acquisition, Zhou Yongming and Zhou Yongming had discussed how to make the mobile Internet experience better and worked together. With its subsequent acquisition, the competition with Apple in the mobile Internet market has become a hot topic. This incident has greatly helped the development of the brand. We did not expect it at the time. Zhou Yongming said so.
Industry insiders believe that when it first entered the smartphone field, its simple, unique appearance design and mid-to-high-end product positioning attracted many users and achieved leapfrog development in the smartphone market. However, after several years of market precipitation, the models have also been put on the hat of changing the soup without changing the medicine and encountered innovation bottlenecks.
It is understood that product models cannot be divided into several clear series during setting. In addition to the earliest,,, and other previous generations of products, users can still distinguish them. The models and positioning of subsequent products have given users a headache, such as,,, And later, users have no way of judging which word represents a better model.
Analyst Pierre Ferragu attributed the decline in performance to the flagship's brutal top-of-the-line phones grabbing too much market share. Data shows that in the fourth quarter of this year, only two mobile phones, Samsung and Samsung, captured % of the smartphone market's shipments, % of sales, and % of operating profits, but apparently no competitor was found.
It is said that the pace of products introduced is so fast that consumers cannot understand each product cycle, and each product cycle is not enough to convey enough brand influence to them. On the contrary, Samsung is very smart. It has started to turn to Apple's single brand strategy since the series. There is only one brand and the series is divided into high, medium and low price models. Moreover, the product rhythm is very relaxed. First, use a model with top-level configuration to launch this series, and then drive the sales of mid-range and low-end models.
The strategic mistake sounded the alarm for Wang Xuehong. Wang Xuehong suddenly appeared at the World Communications Show in Barcelona this year, and this time HTC only brought a series of mobile phones. On the same occasion, HTC brought five mobile phones and a tablet computer. Industry insiders said that HTC has obviously slowed down. This is an important reflection by Wang Xuehong. Although neither Wang Xuehong nor Zhou Yongming agreed with the media's previous label of mobile phone tactics on HTC, Wang Xuehong also admitted that this made the product's positioning less accurate.
Wang Xuehong’s reflection this time seems to have produced a lot of results. It is understood that HTC is working day and night on the latest mobile phone. The mobile phone officially accepted reservations on the morning of this year. Due to the large number of reservations, the server was overwhelmed and no reservations could be made. The rising numbers make it another high-end mobile phone that sells well through online channels. Industry insiders said that based on the current situation, it is estimated that it will be difficult to find a machine on the day of sale.
From being a foundry to creating an independent mobile phone brand, from making great progress to retreating steadily, Wang Xuehong tied herself to the fate of the world and never stopped fighting.