I'm looking at HTC - what I see is a company that did great with Android for a short while, then got chewed up as Apple and Samsung ran away with the high end of the market while the Chinese manufacturers gobbled up the bottom end. All the "Nokia should've gone with Android!" comments I see around the internet never try to explain how they think Nokia would've fared any better than HTC (or Sony, or Motorola).

> Now HTC is making the best VR headset and has a fairly bright future.

You and I see HTC's future very differently. The Vive is the thread they're hanging by, and as soon as Valve doesn't need them anymore, it's going to be over (http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/07/can-we-stop-pretend...)

Back in the day Nokia had good hardware, a 40% marketshare, brand recognition, a loyal customer base and a wide distribution network. Certainly noone knows what Android could have done for them, but theoretically they were at a better position to take advantage of it than HTC/Sony/Motorola.

For example I'm typing this on a Nexus 6 1st gen. A phone that when I bought it, I had to replace it in warranty because the color temperature of the screen was uneven and extremely annoying. And I paid at the time the price for a high end phone and got a subpar camera, a screen that doesn't have the contrast of other phones in its generation and a design that feels cheap and bulky. Well, at least it has stock Android on it. I got basically fooled in buying it, thinking it is a Nexus.

And I could say similar things about Sony. And about LG for that matter. For instance LG had big hits in LG G3 and in Nexus 4 & 5. My wife wanted an LG G5, but apparently it gets overheated, with the customer rep telling us they've had multiple returns. So she went with the Galaxy S7 Edge, because it was the safe choice.

Here's the big problem: if we are talking about exceptional hardware, none of these companies produce good products consistently. Do you know who does that? Apple and Samsung. And back in the day Nokia as well.

My friends and relatives with Samsung phones have had around 4 of them since that time because they always break.

That's not exactly a high bar regarding what we're talking about...

Lose money on their phone business?

>Now HTC is making the best VR headset and has a fairly bright future.

Not so sure about it. Even the best VR headset would be a niche product for the next 5 years at least. At best it can get to Wii kind of success for HTC, but that's not sustainable. And when the big players (Apple, Samsung) and the Chinese commoditizers come into VR, what will HTC have?

You could say this about basically anything for any company. The threat of competition is always there. How about you give some examples of what HTC could be doing where the threat of competition doesn't exist.

Nope, you can't say it for entrenched companies (and companies with diverse revenue sources).

You can't say it for Apple, you can't say it for Facebook, you can't say it for GM, you can't say for Samsung, ...

The threat of competition is always there. How about you give some examples of what HTC could be doing where the threat of competition doesn't exist.

They cripple said hardware with awful software.

Do a lot of people think this? After using a bunch of Android devices for 4 or 5 years, HTC is my "never again."

Was it? They had some nice models for the early smartphone era, and nice camera/lenses, but aside from that?

Plus, Nokia was king of featurephones, with tons of crappy, low margin models...