HTC COO Gets Added to List of Chief Departures from Company Over Past Two Years - The UpStream

Things haven't been looking so great for HTC. While some phones have been fantastic, like the HTC One, others haven't seen such great results, like the Facebook-heavy HTC First. Sales haven't been the best and the company has faced some tough times. With less than three years under his belt, Chief Operating Officer Matthew Costello has resigned from his position with HTC after another dismal sales quarter and shares being down over 75 percent from two years ago.

According to HTC, Fred Liu, the president of engineering and operations, will be handling the COO position until further notice. For Costello, oddly enough he will not be departing the company entirely. Instead, the former COO will move to Europe and will become an executive adviser to the company. Odds are that this will be the case until Liu is comfortable in his new position, and then Costello will be let go. All of this is happening after HTC posted a net income loss of almost 100 percent in the last quarter. Plus, Costello isn't the only person who has left the company. Before him, the finance, design and marketing chiefs have all left the company in the past two years as well.

New Chief Marketing Officer Ben Ho said that things have to turn around for HTC. He mentioned in a statement that the company is going to be more bold and prominent in its advertising campaigns. Of course, the HTC One is probably going to be at the helm of the marketing campaign moving forward. However, Ho didn't speak on any budget for any campaigns moving forward.

We're going to be bolder with marketing in the second half. We're not going to hide our brand anymore.

HTC's CEO, Peter Chou, spoke on driving sales back to the brand as a whole, and said that their highlight phone, the HTC One, will have what it takes to do that.

Response for our flagship device has been strong and demand has exceeded our expectations. We are confident that the business steps we have taken and continue to take are the right ones to lead to a strong resurgence of the HTC brand.

Could the new wave of execs running the company be what HTC needs to make a profit next quarter? Seeing as though this quarter marked the lowest recorded profit in company history, it is obvious things need to change, and fast. I would love to see HTC get into more Windows Phone devices, as people are starting to become frustrated and confused by seeing so many different HTC-branded devices out there all running different iterations of Android. The user experience from one phone to the next, even with the same version of Android, can be completely different depending on the carrier and I think customers are getting tired of re-adjusting to the same stifled product. What do you think? Comment below.