As initially reported by The Verge, Kouji Kodera, the Chief Product Officer at HTC has left the company. He is only the latest of a string of ship jumpers to abruptly leave the company over the past three months.
“HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession — most recently Jason Gordon, the company’s vice president of global communications. Other fresh departures include global retail marketing manager Rebecca Rowland, director of digital marketing John Starkweather, and product strategy manager Eric Lin.”-The Verge
Coinciding with the global launch of the HTC One makes Kodera’s departure quite disconcerting. Once considered the key contender against the iPhone, the HTC One has had its hand’s full taking on giant Samsung with little luck. Sales for 2012 were shoddy at best.
“Investors have taken notice, as they tend to do (eventually) and HTC’s share prices have fallen to $288 from $432 this time last year on the Taiwan exchange.”-Forbes.com
HTC’s sales slump is blamed on a range of things: poor overall sales for the entire Smartphone market of 2012, too much Chinese competition, internal problems within the company and the debacle of the HTC First. The ‘Facebook’ phone that Facebook “had originally signaled its intention to launch the downloadable version of Facebook Home on a significant delay, giving the First some period of exclusivity. Instead, Facebook changed course and made Home available as a Play download the same week that the First launched.”-TheVerge
HTC has banked a lot on the One and with Kodera the latest to leave questions arise as to the future of HTC.
