Original star of the Android age warns of poor financials.
The slide in HTC's fortunes has come suddenly, and illustrates yet again how cruelly and quickly fashions change in the smartphone space.
The Taiwanese company expects revenues to fall 35.5 per cent to around $2.4bn from Q4 2011 to Q1 2012. Its January 2012 revenues were less than half of January 2011.
What a turnaround from last July, when HTC announced it had sold 12.1 million smartphones, up an impressive 123.7 per cent on Q2 2010's figure.
It all looked so good then with handsets like the Desire selling well and much expected of the Sensation, Evo 3G, Wildfire S, Chacha, Salsa and Flyer.
But then came iPhone 4S and the stratospheric rise of the Galaxy S series. Both cut into HTC's sales.
Article continues belowAdvertisement
Winston Yung, chief financial officer at HTC, said: “The sales we had originally expected for our high-end phones did not really materialise ... our product offering in the fourth quarter could have been better.”
However, the firm is adamant that a combination of wider LTE adoption (it offers one of the market's few LTE devices), new products to be unveiled at MWC and a further push into emerging markets will reverse its dip.
It told analysts that “despite short-term difficulties, momentum will resume in the upcoming product cycle driven by HTC’s brand strength, innovation, and design/engineering capabilities.”
For all the recent slowdown, HTC’s good health in early 2011 ensured that full year figures were up 67.1 per cent year-on-year.
Add a new comment
You need to be logged in to post comments. If you do not have an account then please register.
Comments
0 comments
There are no comments yet, be the first to add one!