In what’s perhaps a step in the right direction for the deteriorating company, HTC has reportedly signed actor Robert Downey Jr. to a two-year global contract worth $12 million. Supposedly, Downey Jr. will market the drowning brand as himself instead of the box office smash hit characters he portrays on the silver screen, most notably Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes.
HTC is in desperate need for a pick-me-up as marketing blunders, delayed releases, and executive departures have steeply dropped the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer’s stock to a point where it’s currently trading at four-fifths of its value in 2011, when it trailed only Apple in smartphone sales in the U.S.
The flagship smartphone by HTC, the HTC One, is certainly a formidable device and able to compete with the likes of the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S4 but the company appears to lack vision and a sense of its place in the smartphone market. Signing Downey Jr. will likely pay off big for HTC as the Academy Award nominated actor is a global money maker with his The Avengers and Sherlock Homes franchises having grossed $5,001,645,677 and $1,059,726,768 worldwide, respectively.
HTC has been plagued as of late by poor marketing, botched releases, and fleeing executives. The HTC One handset was expected to be released in March of this year but due to a diss by suppliers, the device wasn’t made consumer available until the end of April.
The delay resulted in terrible sales for HTC as it recorded a dismal quarterly earnings reported at roughly $2.8 million from 5 million phones sold in just over a month. To put it in perspective, consider that rival electronics giant Samsung more than doubled HTC’s output by shipping 10 million handsets in even less time.
As if to add insult to injury, five leading upper management members left the multinational conglomerate all within several weeks of each other citing reasons unknown.
For July, HTC recently announced it will be debuting its next-generation HTC Butterfly S for just the Asia Pacific market. Seeing as how RDJ is going to be HTC’s global spokesperson for the next two years, there’s a good chance we’ll get to see him in some weird international marketing campaigns.
