HTC’s ability to survive as an independent company may be past the point of no return. Asymco’s Horace Dediu notes that once most manufacturers start posting operating losses on their handset sales, they very rarely recover and usually get bought out by larger companies. History has shown that this has been the case with Motorola and Nokia, that it’s most likely about to be the case with BlackBerry and that it will probably be the case with HTC as well. That doesn’t mean you should expect HTC to be sold off tomorrow, however. In the past it’s taken anywhere from a year-and-a-half (BlackBerry) to five years (Motorola) for a company to get bought out once it starts posting negative handset



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