Asus chairman Jonney Shih recently told its company's shareholders that he is open about plans of acquiring fellow Taiwan-based company HTC. The statement made waves on the tech community and the two companies immediately refute the allegations.
HTC posted a statement on its website saying, "We strongly deny the news. We didn't contact Asusteck and will not consider the acquisition. As an international brand, HTC will continue to design world-class innovative smart devices through its pursuit of brilliance brand promise."
Asus vice president for global operation Eric Chen told Turkey-based newspaper Bugun that the HTC acquisition is currently not part of their plan. However, Chen added that they are not dismissing the possibility entirely. The acquisition can be considered as long as it is beneficial for the two companies.
According to Tech Crunch, HTC's sales output has plummeted in recent years despite the fact that the company is producing some of the best Android devices on the market. HTC One is easily one of the best Android smartphone when it was released in 2013. HTC followed this with the HTC One M8 released in 2013 and the HTC One M9.
Despite producing some of the best Android devices, HTC is still struggling to find traction behind brand names like Samsung, Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi.
In order to find a solution to the company's dwindling sales output, HTC announced in March that Peter Chou will be replace by Cher Wang as head of the company. Chou was reported to take the helm of HTC's product development division. Currently, HTC is entering the virtual reality headset industry in order to broaden the company's market.