HTC's string of executive departures continues today, as a leaked email has revealed that COO Matthew Costello has stepped down from his position before this three-year anniversary. HTC confirmed the news of Costello's decision to Bloomberg Businessweek, which originally learned of the news in a leaked email. Costello will stay on with HTC as an executive advisor, while Fred Liu will take on Costello's duties in addition to his own position as president of engineering and operations.
Costello's decision to step down is the latest, and possibly most high-profile, executive departure to hit HTC in recent months. It was revealed last month that HTC has lost its Chief Product Officer along with several other directors and managers. The company is certainly having a rough time lately, not only due to the exit of multiple high-ranking employees, but also because of its market share numbers that keep dwindling as competitors Samsung and Apple continue to grow.
While it's never good to see a company hitting a rough patch, it's especially tough for some to watch HTC's situation. HTC is an important name to many in the Android crowd because of the fact that it made the very first device running Google's mobile OS, called the G1 in the U.S., and because it wasn't all that long ago that the Taiwanese device maker was doing pretty well for itself.
There is some good HTC news today to help counteract a bit of the bad, though, as the aforementioned leaked email says that the company is planning to form a quality assurance division to keep an eye on HTC product reliability. Another group within HTC will be tasked with handling issues related to the company's product lifecycles.
In addition to these new divisions, HTC today announced an unaudited consolidated revenue of NT$29.0 billion ($969.41 million USD) for May 2013. Android Central notes that that means that May has been the best month of 2013 so far for HTC, bringing it up to a total revenue of NT$91.4 billion ($3.061 billion USD) for the year and total Q2 revenue of NT$48.6 billion ($1.624 billion USD). HTC executives recently reported that sales of HTC's flagship One were around 5 million in May and that the company planned to increase production in June to help meet strong demand, which is certainly good news for the struggling firm, as is the upcoming launch of the One on Verizon Wireless.
