Why is the collective slump in Taiwanese technology companies from HTC to Acer?

This Tuesday, Taiwan's PC giant Acer announced the replacement of its CEO and the implementation of layoffs and restructuring plans, the share price plunged. After Acer became HTC, another fast-falling Taiwanese technology company. In addition, the PC manufacturers ASUS status is not optimistic. Why Taiwan's technology brands are collectively depressed? Recent foreign media analysis pointed out that there are two main reasons: and Apple as the emergence of weak innovation; product design concept behind, designers do not pay enough attention to the past long-term foundry history, leaving too much emphasis on "functional richness and low price" sequelae. Over the past decade, Taiwan's technology industry has become a representative consumer electronics brand in Taiwan, recognising its weakness as an industry-independent brand and competing with former OEM clients. These brands once relied on stunning innovation to become the industry's dominate. As consumer electronics become a cheap commodity, Taiwanese brands have been less visible in the past in manufacturing and cost control, and technological innovation has become the key, but there has been an innovation stagnation in Taiwan's technology brands. Many years ago, Asus invented the world's first netbook, a slightly diminished, but more compact, functionally economical computer that once sparked a global emulation of the computer industry. Unfortunately, as Apple's ipad becomes more and more popular, the portability advantages of netbooks are no longer the product of the day. In addition, HTC has created the world's first smartphone with Android (released by US T) and HTC dominates the early Android phone market. Relying on early innovation and cost advantages, Acer became the world's second-largest computer maker in 2010, and HTC dominated the One-fifth smartphone market in 2011, after Apple. Today, however, the Taiwanese brand's climb along the "innovation ladder" seems to have stalled. Faced with the advantages of labor cost in mainland China, Taiwanese foundry companies have set up factories in the mainland, and Taiwan's science and technology industry has been diverted by foundry workers and brands. However, many years of foundry tradition have influenced the thinking of product design of Taiwanese brands. Taiwan's local brand consultant, Mark-stocker, says the simple formula for Taiwan's economic miracle is to find a product, create it at a lower cost, find a large order, and then look for another product to repeat the process. "Taiwanese bosses don't know how to create an appealing product based on their emotional preferences," said Albert-chen, a former industrial designer at Acer and now a design consultant for HTC. He said that Samsung in the design of products, will take into account the consumer lifestyle and other factors. "When I visit different exhibitions, whether it's electronics or design exhibitions, I rarely see Taiwanese designers or product developers or planners, I just see a lot of Taiwanese management," says Albert-chen. "It is reported that within Taiwan's technology companies, designers have to surround the needs of engineers, and that the opposite is right inside Apple." Many times, designers want to "jump out of the box" idea, but product managers value the cost of performance ratio. The designer of a foundry said that once they had communicated with Asus and Acer's product managers, they made a startling statement-"Don't worry about our product image." In addition, the project managers of these enterprises, many of them have engineers and research background, most of them do not believe in their own company's internal designers. In addition, the competition of the Technology brand becomes the contest of the user experience, with the Apple as the representative, the technology company hopes to control all aspects of the user experience from the hardware, software and the sales link. Apple, for example, designs chips, operating systems, software, hardware, and even stores itself. In addition, Samsung Electronics to supply chain links (many by Samsung under the banner of Enterprises Supply) has a strong control. Industry experts said that Taiwan's technology brand to achieve success, in the future and consumer communication, we must put the price, configuration, technology and other elements behind the scenes, more talk about product appearance, design and the message passed. "Taiwanese manufacturers are unaware that they are still creating brands with cost-effective thinking, which is no longer effective," said Mark-stocker, the brand consultant. ”