A decline in the stock price of phone manufacturer HTC Corporation has left the company in a decidedly awkward position: it is now worth less than it has cash on hand.

According to reports this means that HTC’s assets are not only now worth nothing, they’re actually a liability to the company’s bottom line.

“HTC’s cash is the only asset of value to shareholders,” Sinopac Financial Holdings Co. analyst Calvin Huang told Bloomberg Business. “Most of the other assets shouldn’t be considered in their valuation because there’s more write-offs to come and the brand has no value.”

HTC’s market cap hit a low of NT$74 billion ($1.5 billion) in trading Monday, far from its peak back in 2010 of NT$900 billion ($28.4 billion), off the back of the company leading the pack in Android phones at the time, a mantle it has since long lost to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

The company’s approach to dealing with its now almost complete failure has been to both cut its costs and product lines, with a focus primarily on high-end smartphones where the margins are higher, and the competitors are far fewer; it was a risky step, and although HTC actually managed to deliver a small profit of $11 million in the first quarter, whether it’s a sustainable strategy, in the long run, presuming HTC actually lasts that much longer, is an entirely different question.

Its latest flagship phone the HTC One M9 was generally met with little enthusiasm as it was nothing more than a modest upgrade from the otherwise well-received One M8; in a premium market dominated by Apple, Inc. and Samsung, HTC really needs some rabbits in their proverbial hats, and so far they’ve not managed to find one.

Sad times

Although few would mourn the passing of HTC in 2015 when, or if it was to collapse, it will always have a place in phone history however as the leader of the first wave of Android smartphones.

The first HTC Desire was the best available Android smart phone on the market in its day, at a time Samsung had released its first Galaxy S series phone but wasn’t that well-known in the market at the time; where Samsung got it right was continued innovations in features but not necessarily form factor, where HTC was often a laggard in feature development for some time, and by the time it caught up with the gorgeous looking and well equipped One series, Samsung owned the top end of the Android market and it was too late.

The options for the company going forward is that if stockholders truly believe the company has turned a corner it may give it the grace to prove itself, with the other option being a takeover of the board, and a full liquidation of assets, with the remaining cash at hand to be handed over to investors.

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