OnLive Failure Costs HTC $40 Million

HTC is suffering through a downturn in its smartphone business, the loss of its Beats Audio majority ownership and now a $40 million loss brought forth by the complete incompetence of online game streaming service OnLive.

While the streaming service was purchased by an outside firm this past week HTC informed the Taiwan Stock Exchange that it suffered a $40 million loss after the company fired nearly its entire staff this past week.

OnLive has restructured in such a way as to return some initial investor funds however HTC does not appear to believe that its return on investment will be very large following the company’s acquisition.

HTC is not the only company that will lose money from the OnLive failure, other large corporations invested in the online gaming irm include Warner Bros., Autodesk, Maverick Capital, AT&T and British Telecom. None of those companies have announced losses from the OnLive sale at this time.

OnLive went on to rehire approximately half of its staff this week after being purchased by a yet to be revealed owner. The gaming platform managed to operate without service disruption. The company began to fail after it spent hugely on server expansion while failing to increase its clientele base at the same rate of expansion.

HTC in the meantime has witnessed drastic cuts in sales and profits as the company’s various ventures continue to lose market share. With Samsung now dominating the Google Android market, Apple controlling the tablet space and Beats Audio once again licensing its wares internationally as a separate entity we are now left to question HTC’s future.