HTC has been in troubled waters for a while now, and last year decided to sell its smartphone design division to Google in a $1.1 billion (roughly Rs. 7,000 crores) deal. Now, the company has reportedly laid off its U.S. staff, and merged the smartphone and virtual reality divisions as part of a streamlining exercise. This move comes soon after HTC's head of smartphone unit, Chialin Chang, resigned from the company.
According to a report by Digital Trends, HTC has fired "large portion of its U.S. team, leaving only employees for HTC Global in the U.S. office." The number of employees who received the pink slip is still unclear, and is said to range from a few dozens to close to 100.
In a statement to the publication, HTC said in an email statement, "We have recently brought our smartphone and VR businesses under common leadership in each region. Today, we announced a restructure in North America for the HTC smartphone business that will centralize the reporting structure within the region. In doing so, there have been some employee reductions to align the businesses and empower the teams to share more resources."
HTC has not tasted success in the smartphone market with its flagship U series phones, while its Vive range of VR headsets has been received positively but remains out of reach of most consumers. The company in December last year also announced it will scale back smartphone launches in 2018.
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