HTC’s October earnings down 61 per cent. Droid DNA to rescue?

by Mark Tyson on 7 November 2012, 13:00

Tags: HTC (TPE:2498), PC

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HTC has released a lot of impressive smartphones in 2012 but the brand is somehow lacking the sales pulling power of its glory days. Latest figures from the Taiwanese mobile making firm show that the company’s revenues for October 2012 were down a disastrous 61 per cent compared to the same time last year. Further to this news Morgan Stanley has released a new forecast report suggesting that HTC could slip from fifth place to eighth in the global smartphone sales league table in Q4.

HTC has suffered from bad results and bad headlines already this year; a 79 per cent drop in quarterly revenue was reported last month, in September Morgan Stanley suggested the Taiwanese firm couldn’t compete except by selling cheap.

The latest results show that HTC brought in just NT$17.2 billion in October 2012 compared to NT$44.1 billion in October 2011. Comparing the whole year earnings at this time last year HTC had made NT$408 billion, this year it’s only NT$246 billion. HTC has suffered, not just from dwindling smartphone market share but also its tablet attempts fell flat; they were probably a bit pricy compared to competing ASUS/Google and Amazon efforts.

HTC has a lot of good handsets with potential just released or to be released shortly. There is the Android based One X+ and a range of new Windows Phone 8 handsets that are too new to have made much difference to the company. It does seem, like Morgan Stanley suggest, that the HTC WP8 phones are undercutting similar spec Nokia and Samsung efforts to get a foothold. If WP8 succeeds a lot of the mid market smartphones sold could be HTC branded.

HTC Droid DNA leaked pic

In further and more optimistic HTC related news a new Android flagship from HTC may be on the way to the western world; a version of the water resistant HTC J Butterfly 5-inch 1080p superphone. There’s an upcoming event shared by HTC and Verizon on 13th November in New York that is expected to offer up a version of the J Butterfly to US customers renamed as the HTC Droid DNA. I wonder when we’ll get one in the UK.

HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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Posted by kingpotnoodle - Wed 07 Nov 2012 13:53
It looks dangerously like an iPhone!

HTCs problem is that Sense, what should be their major plus, has become a memory hog and they don't have enough RAM in their phones to handle it. The ICS build for my HTC Sensation (768MB RAM) was a disaster, it was bloated and very slow - now I'm running a Jelly Bean ROM sans Sense it is fine and more usable despite the bugs in the custom ROM. THe One X, S and X+ are still stuck at 1GB and running out of RAM so closing apps to keep runnning smoothly.
Posted by Spud1 - Wed 07 Nov 2012 14:40
My current phone is a HTC device - but my next one won't be.

The quality of their devices has rocketed right down in recent years, and this is a big reason for their current problems imo..if you add that together with very unimpressive devices such as their HTC 8X which pales in comparison to it's competitors, then there is very little reason for anyone to buy HTC over the competition. Price isn't such an issue at the top end of the market - £30-£40 different isn't going to convince me to go HTC over Nokia when we're talking £400ish!

A shame as Sense is really good and they have a good track record, but standards have slipped :(

In addition, further “droid DNA” will likely only weaken their position due to the massive fragmentation in that market..whereas with Windows Phone 8 they had a big opportunity to really shine and out-do the competition. They failed on that, miserably.
Posted by kopite - Wed 07 Nov 2012 14:46
My previous 2 phones where both HTC and I loved sense but when it comes to upgrading the galaxy s3 just seemed better in every respect xxx
Posted by jimbouk - Wed 07 Nov 2012 14:53
But who's going to but a Droid DNA when they'll just release a Droid DNA+ a few months later and not bother to update the original versions software?
Posted by crossy - Wed 07 Nov 2012 15:10
kopite
My previous 2 phones where both HTC and I loved sense but when it comes to upgrading the galaxy s3 just seemed better in every respect xxx
I'm going to be contrary here. My eldest daughter and I both moved from Sony's Xperia phones - me to a Galaxy S3 and her to an HTC One S. Her One S is fast with a good screen (better than my S3's - grrr), trouble is that the power/data socket's on the side (which complicates use in a car holder a bit) and I just can't get to like Sense at all. It's not that it's ugly or particularly slow, more that TouchWiz on my phone feels more natural and quicker.

So if I was in the market for a midrange phone then the One S would be on the top of my shortlist, but I'd have to root it and de-Sense-itize it - the stock ICS UI is preferable in my books.

And sorry HTC, if I'm looking for a Windows8 phone then I'm buying a Lumia. So if I'm typical (and that'd be a turn up for the books!) then HTC's best option is to head for the budget and midrange ends of the Windows8 market.

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