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HTC Profits Drop By 79%
An anonymous reader writes "HTC is the world's fifth largest phone maker, but it's starting to feel some serious pressure from giants like Samsung and Apple. HTC's third quarter net income dropped 79% from the previous quarter, and total revenues were down 48%. 'Sales of HTC's flagship One series, which debuted in February, are trailing off as Apple and Samsung spend four to six times more on marketing to ensure the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy SIII dominate the market, while strongly subsidizing their older models ... HTC's share of the global smartphone market by shipments fell to 5.8% in the second quarter from 10.7% a year earlier, according to Bloomberg. The company released its first Windows Phone 8 models in September, its most high-profile pre-Christmas launch, but Microsoft's operating system has yet to establish itself as a serious third player after Google's Android and Apple's iOS.'"
I have trouble faulting a company from Taiwan for disregarding the UN, as the UN insists on disregarding Taiwan.
The HTC Vivid was the last AT&T phone that had a MicroSD slot. The One X variants and subsequent models do not.
Of course, the carriers hate SD slots, because they would rather you eat up all of your data accessing your stuff in the "cloud." Google is also all-to-happy to remove the SD slot for the same reason, because they want to access your data, too, and it's easier for them if you're storing it on their hard drives.
I absolutely will not buy a phone or tablet that does not have an SD slot. If they all stop offering them, I'll just keep limping along on my Inspire until it dies, and then I'll go get a prepaid dumb phone.
Smart phones are fun toys, but they are useless unless I can store my music and videos directly on them.
High Tech Computer..... really? That's so 1990. Reminds me of mom-and-pop computer stores that assembled and sold generic 386 clones back in the day.
Maybe HTC should stop making stupid design decisions like a non removable battery and no microSD expansion slot? Owned original HTC Desire and still love it, despite browsing Slashdot on it was soo slow.
Don't worry HTC, those Microsoft phones will get you back in action!
I've bought HTC phones exclusively since Android came out but I've grown tired of all the issues that popup. Plus HTC tends to be douchey about releasing source code and drivers, so my next phone will be from elsewhere.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
While they are still making profit, unlike nokia, I believe they have gambled on the wrong feature. I love my HTC One X, but seriously, who makes use of a quad 1.5Ghz CPU in a phone? True, this is not a server chip, but I'm pretty sure a dual core would have been more than sufficient.
In my opinion it would make more sense to have sleeker user interface features, more battery life and or better camera etc.
So between the software lock-in "features" of IOS & the superior implementation and marketing of Samsung the third player loses because they are competing for the same segment.
Who knows, maybe windows will save it. At least it will be different and not easily comparable. A different quality product would not necessarily compete for the same customers.
Give us usability, cross device sync, larger than 2GB file support, playback of popular
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I'm still using my HTC Vision, and as a piece of hardware, I do adore it (and hope to pass it on to my sister when I upgrade*). But their policies towards unlocking bootloaders have varied between inconsistent to evil. I love their hardware, but I'm pretty much done.
Sadly, I don't think those of us who root our phones and install community OSes constitute much of a demographic for marketing purposes.
* Likely soon. Likely to the Galaxy S Relay - I'm old fashioned enough to strongly prefer a hard keyboard, and by preference a five row keyboard.
HTC is one of the best phone hardware companies. The don't lock down their phones too much and it always seems their older models get support from the community on xda.
I've been considering the Nexus 7 (as well as Galaxy Nexus) for a long time now, and I think I've finally concluded that I will not purchase either due to the lack of basic expandable storage. Any suggestions from the slashdot crowd?
http://cdn2.mamapop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/mike-score-flock-of-seagulls.jpg
I ran? so far? away? I couldn'? get away?
HTC,
I went to the Verizon store to pick up a replacement recently. No HTC One? Really? Why?
How I used to love 'ya. I'm still using my HTC Incredible. It's been, well, pretty incredible. Well, until the latest updates came out. I've had more crashes since the last update than I had over the last 3 years.
My next phone won't be an IPhone. It won't be a Windows phone either. What does that leave me with? Motorola? They break promises with 1yr old phones; Should I look at the new RAZR models? Will they get JellyBean? Who knows?
That leaves Samsung.... Is it really so hard to create an Android phone that we can get excited about?
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
Yes, the OP was saying that since the HTC doesn't have an SD card, people like him who think smartphones "are useless unless I can store my music and videos directly on them" won't buy and therefore the HTC isn't selling "because they removed the SD Card".
Where, precisely, is the mind making up supposed to occur where it hasn't already been steady?
Change the name of the poorly named HTC EVO 4G LTE to the EVO 5 then advertise it. It stacks up well against the competition, but either people think it's a 2 year old phone or they've never heard of it.
I'm still using my HTC Nexus One, at least for a few more months until the new Nexus phones come out. It's getting a bit long in the tooth, but i'm really going to miss the combination trackball/notification light. The trackball part in particular is an awesome feature that unfortunately doesn't seem to have caught on with anyone, including HTC itself. I was worried about how well fine adjustments of the text cursor was going to work without the trackball, and after getting a Nexus 7 my fears were confirmed. Especially for the far too common case of text boxes that won't let you scroll if the text goes past the edge of the box. And it works really well for menu selection in games/apps that are smart enough to handle the alternate method.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
BEcause an SD card in the slot IS "on the device" and SD cards are cheaper by MB than on-device storage. And, moreover, because his rant was against all the providers wanting the data on "the cloud" so that access to it meant profit, even a pack of SD cards that CAN be inserted by selecting one is most definitely not in the cloud and therefore on the device (if only in potentia).
Definitely not coffusing or poorly written enough to demand a "Make your mind up" post.
And you cannot say otherwise. After all, it is a credible statement to connect the lack of an SD card to the drop in sales and the cause of that to so many users thinking a smartphone (as opposed to feature phone or just plain old phone) without an SD card IS useless to them.
If no SD card slot is not a problem, what do you base that on? The lack of sales being less than forecast for other reasons?
I know why I rejected all HTC products:
http://gizmodo.com/5864318/htc-blames-the-carriers-for-the-carrier-iq-spying-mess-on-htc-phones
Any product carrying known spyware like Carrier IQ, I will not buy your products, ANY OF THEM. Just rot in hell HTC.
For me, HTC's strength was their continued devotion to physical QWERTY siding keyboards. I'm simply not going to be SSH-ing into a server with a touchscreen.
Two things have sunk this affection. First, HTC (like the rest of the industry) is moving away from physical keyboards. Second, the last QWERTY I got from them crapped out in a really disappointing way. I had a MyTouch 4G slide, also known as the HTC Doubleshot. Really nice phone, decent modding community. The thing is, it's got a design flaw. The flex cable between the front and back halves of the phone failed, causing a whole basket of things to go wrong. When I disassembled the unit, I could clearly see how the edge of a metal bracket was rubbing against the cable every time the phone was opened or closed.
If you've got a HTC Doubleshot, it's just a matter of time before it fails. I'm sure the design engineers recognized this problem but they likely had their fix overruled to save production cost or hustle the unit out the door. Worse, it could have been planned obsolescence, given that the problem manifested a month after the warranty expired.
Meanwhile, my HTC Dream is chugging along with new old-stock units available for $90, and HTC has walked away from the one thing they did better than the rest of the industry .
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
That bit me when I bought an unlocked HTC phone for travelling.
I call it the Islamofacist phone (note: I've nothing against most Muslims I've met, but I do have something against countries that force it on their citizens, and companies that resell such phones as unlocked).
Most of the applications wouldn't work, you couldn't use the app store or install unapproved apps. Most installed apps didn't work except (a) the web browser, oddly enough. (B) A prayer time reminder (that you couldn't turn off, but could set to local or Mecca time), a Koran reader, and similarly themed app.
At that point, why the hell bother with a smartphone?
Oh it also had a Farsi keyboard and keylogger/spyware.
The company that sold it wouldn't provide support (BrainStorm I believe, maybe MindStorm?), and Newegg wouldn't allow a return.
GRRRR. Thanks for reminding me of that waste of $150 fucking dollars
My first and so far last smartphone is HTC Desire. What a piece of @#$%#!
First, the menu buttons on the bottom stop working after 1 year regular use (3 out of 3 - the phones of myself, my wife and a friend)
Second, and much more frustrating - no system updates. Zero, nada,zip! I am still running Android 2.2 ?!? Their proprietary overlay of Android is utter crap, I have no control over the device (unless I root, but damn it why bother - I should get unlocked phone from the start), I cannot remove shit like Facebook applications, stock market update (WTF?!?) and so on....sometimes the phone just stops responding because it is busy running....itself
Now, I'll admit the above is not necessarily a flaw of HTC only, but come on...Overall I am utterly disappointed by the whole smartphone thingy. I expected a small PC in my pocket and all I got is locked, slow, power hungry piece of shit, that spends 80% of its power running itself... and no, I am not going Apple because of this (different set of crap IMO) but I just might "devolve" to dumb phone again.
New slogan - "dumb phones are for smart people, smart phones are for dummies". Please, spread it around - we just might convince enough people to stop falling for the hype and get those companies in line...oh, forgot boycott does not work in our economic paradigm. Well, forget it...
I have trouble faulting a company from Taiwan for disregarding the UN, as the UN insists on disregarding Taiwan.
True, but if I was Taiwan, I would be weary of disregarding US opinions, regardless of UN parroting them or not. OTOH, strategically significant allies, like Taiwan, Israel, or Turkey, have quite large benefits.
Apple has the iphone
Samsung has the Galaxy S3
verizon has droids
people know these names. HTC used to release a new phone a month on different carriers under different names with slightly different specs. diluted the brand because people didn't know what they were buying
The problem is HTC hasn't got the word out. Everyone's talking about the Samsung Galaxy S3 and new iphone, but the One X is, IMHO, the best phone on the market right now. The screen alone makes it better than the SGS3 and iphone 5. Also has a very nice camera and never lags. Everyone who sees my phone is like "wow, what phone is that?"
I've also owned the One V, which is a low end phone, but surprisingly feature packed. For the record, I actually like the HTC Sense interface better than vanilla android.
Apple and Samsung spend four to six times more on marketing to ensure the iPhone 5 and the Galaxy SIII dominate the market, while strongly subsidizing their older models...
Oh yeah, if only our competitors did not advertise nor compete on price/features, then we'd be doing great!
Given that the US needs Taiwan far, far more than Taiwan needs the US, I think Taiwan can do whatever the hell they want. Taiwan remaining independent is more important to the US than it is to Taiwan.
I hate printers.
HTC make the second best Android phones behind Samsung. If Samsung turn evil or make stupid decisions I don't agree with, I like having HTC there as a backup. I owned a HTC HD2 (no it's not a native Android phone) but the build quality, for the time was fairly good and HTC Sense really isn't that bad. (Then again, I don't hate touchwiz either)
I hear Sony's Android phones aren't shabby but I have a hard time believing a juggernaught like Sony would release timely products or updates. Also LG and Motorola both "not bad" but HTC is definitely, in my eyes #2 - it'd be a shame to see them completely slayed.
I don't follow them too closely but I believe they were continuing to focus on Microsoft based phones which seems, completely foolhardy to me - the sales numbers on those things would be quite miniscule, fingers crossed they remain competitive. (The HTC One X does have a glorious screen, but the lack of removable battery or SD card slot is a no no, the actual design however - for the most part is quite nice looking like the S3)
Maybe they don't want you to have an SD card so you will spend $50 more for the 16GB model, instead of the 8GB model?
HTC EVO 3D/V 4G are the single most feature packed phones on the market for the money. 3d camera/display, dual core 1.2ghz process, 9dof IMU, FM radio, and unlocked bootloader.
I imagine some of the new Galaxy S phones have improved or matched some of these features, but no other phone includes all of the above. Nearly 2 years old and still the best phone on the market.
If my V 4G breaks I will switch carriers to Boost Mobile or Cricket just to be able to use my bad ESN EVO 3D's for another several years.
My wife had an HTC phone and I found the Sense UI to be terrible. It slowed down her phone because it was so resource hungry and most of the changes in Sense didn't really add any value, they were just flashy changes meant to impress people. I flashed cyanogenmod and she loved it. I love HTC's hardware, but would never buy one of the phones again unless they improve their awful UI.
first i had to put the battery in and it took 20 minutes to open the cover.
Well, you know, you have said everything... I will tease some appletards friends of mine with this post :D
I'd say that they don't currently have any real differentiation from the other products out there, at least not in a good way.
I'm using an HTC phone right now and I'm pretty pleased with it, but I bought it when it had already been discontinued after only being available for less than a year. Why did I buy the HTC Amaze 4G instead of the other options (HTC One S, Galaxy S II, etc.)? It has a camera button, and after my previous Samsung phone I really wanted that. It also has a replaceable battery and MicroSD card.
fencepost
just a little off
I never understood why manufacturers feel the need to include crappy non-removable bloatware games and their own home-grown half-assed crappy UIs.
Doesn't matter much to me though; I'll just root and install what I want.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
It's the same old problem with Taiwanese companies. They're capable of producing a great product but don't quite appreciate the value of consistency and marketing. They don't really define a vision and are too reactive; someone else comes up with a defining product and they rush to match it. Granted, HTC has done better than most. Usually Taiwanese companies flirt with the bottom, trying to offer a feature rich product on the cheap. You get good value but you never get the sense of a committed brand focused on quality. And the Chinese have taken over this space.
Historically, however, Taiwanese companies have had to fend for themselves. South Korean chaebols have enjoyed the benefit of government backing, enabling them to focus quality and design. It created a scenario in which they were able to build global, established brands in a relatively brief amount of time. Who would have taken a Korean brand seriously 15 to 20 years ago? It took Japanese companies closer to 30 years to establish themselves and they didn't have the competition Taiwanese are facing. HTC hasn't yet been able to define themselves as a prestige brand like Apple, or even Samsung to a lesser extent.
I do think HTC has one of the best custom Android skins on the market, superior to anything the Koreans offer.
Everyone else must be as frustrated as I am with HTC devices not being able to be upgraded to ICS.
Taiwan remaining independent is more important to the US than it is to Taiwan.
Seems to me US companies will outsource to companies based in Taiwan or mainland China interchangeably these days, regardless of the fact that one is democratic and the other a supposed Communist dictatorship.
Hmm, that's sad... I'm trolling Craigslist right now for an HTC MyTouch 4G Slide to replace the current 3G Slide I'm still using now. I wish there was some newer phone with a physical keyboard that also ran Android 4.x out of the box.
I've dropped my 3G Slide so often (sometimes from the GPS mount on my bicycle while moving) it's not even funny. That killed a cheap microSD card I had once, but other than that and lots of dings and deep scratches and a missing camera cover, everything still works.
Are there any other decent slider phones I should be looking at? My other thought is to just get a Nexus 7 and a little bluetooth keyboard and a huge set of belt holsters and tether it to my existing 3G Slide (which still gets excellent "4G" HSDPA+ datalink).
Had a HTC Desire HD for 2 months and it started to act up, calls came in and the phone froze for no reason, traded for a Galaxy and happily using it after that.
It does have an SD card, removable battery, not too big (4.3"), hardware camera buttons (for both still and video camera), nice build quality with metal all around the outside edge. Also like that at www.htc-dev.com one can get the unlock code for the boot loader - that is due to them listening to the user community.
Dislike: Sense - it's nice but I really want the option to turn it off. Samsung Galaxy Nexus has similar hardware specs inside but is much smoother.
Dislike: came with Facebook app that could not be removed (on Android 2.3.4 - since been updated OTA to 4.0.? and will get 4.1 - Facebook no longer auto-starts with full permissions).
Dislike lack of hardware answer/hang-up buttons on face, with navigation ring button.
Dislike: lack of mods - too quick to release new models (HTC One) therefore there isn't much of a community for updates. Would love to get Cyanogen Mod for it!
So, I'm disappointed to see HTC hurting but if they want to get back into the game they've got to give us a chance to a) turn off Sense, b) encourage the modding community.
I like Android and prefer it over Apple's offerings, I hate to see any monopoly develop for Android phone developers. I don;t want to see Samsung become the next Apple.
"An SD card is not a phone."
Neither is the data. Nor a phone call. Nor radio waves.
And plumpsqatch, no, an SD card slot in a phone IS NOT external to the phone. It's inside the phone case, dickhead.
Doesn't BP stand for British Petrol?
BP dropped that name around the time it rebranded itself in 2001 as "Beyond Petroleum" and replaced the shield with the sunflower. If BP stands for anything, it's "Apis urine", or in layman's terms, bee pee.
Here's a good reason to demand microSD: [if your phone breaks,] your data is gone.
And if the phone is lost or stolen?
With iOS, either you use iTunes or iCloud.
Why not have both? Back up the data on your microSDHC card to a PC or a server or something.
How did you guys get into a situation where your carrier gets to decide which phones you can and cannot use?
CDMA2000, that's how. In CDMA2000, unlike in GSM/UMTS/LTE, a removable subscriber identity module is optional, and U.S. carriers don't support it. Even on GSM/UMTS/LTE, different carriers own different frequency bands.
One carefully placed frivolous patent lawsuit and HTC is finished. Meanwhile Google is, in practical terms, letting Motorola die. This will leave Appleus Maximus, Samsung and LG in the US and a few small players like Sony and Sanyo. Nokia is going away as a company.
Sounds like pretty soon the US will HAVE to allow Huwai and ZTE into US markets just to avoid the charges of letting a near monopoly happen.
Except the US protects Taiwan from the complete ruination that China wants to bring. Taiwan and the US are equally important allies, trading and politically. --Taiwanese guy living in the US.
Taiwan remaining independent is more important to the US than it is to Taiwan.
And how would you quantify and/or qualify those statements?
I still think of Taiwan as the real China. The rest of the country is under occupation by an evil regime.
True, but if I was Taiwan, I would be weary of disregarding US opinions, regardless of UN parroting them or not.
If you were Taiwan you would be tired of disregarding US opinions?
That's not how my Taiwanese friends feel about it. They get very offended if I mistakenly call them Chinese.
They are now S-Off... enough annoyance already...
http://bit.ly/OoR2bQ
What you may not have thought of is what happens when the phone dies.
When my phone went dead and I sent it out to be fixed, I removed my sd card, so that when it came back from repair with the internal memory reformated and the OS completely reinstalled, I didn't loose all my data.
Also, I can put the sd card in a reader and recover all the family photos and videos on my PC even if the phone has died.
And that my friends IS important.
That'd be due to a chip on the shoulder, since the vast majority of Taiwanese are indeed Chinese. Ethnically, if nothing else.
Ask them if they celebrate Spring Festival...
If your phone had a robust backup procedure you wouldn't care either.
If i lose/break/whatever my iphone I can walk into an apple store, get a new one and leave with all my data (minus my music which will be added next time i tether since i dont' pay for itunes match) and applications restored to the phone using their wifi.
I like my HTC Evo 4G but..
1) eats batteries like cookie monster eats cookies
2) email attachments get downloaded repeatedly, and stored in an inaccessible folder
3) bloatware you cannot delete even if you don't use it and phone memory is used up due to #2.
4) not waterproof
What means does Android provide to do that?
Android provides a web browser so that you can use Google to search for android sd backup, and links to apps like this start on the first page of results.
So you have to get a third party app to match what comes with an iPhone.
In other words, we agree that both iOS and Android are capable of remote backup, whether through functionality shipped on the device or an application available through official channels.
Which means most Android users aren't doing that.
But how many iOS users are doing that? And does iOS have a way to back up one's data to someone other than Apple should iCloud die (e.g. what happened to MobileMe after iCloud came out) or become restricted (e.g. when MobileMe went paid sometime in the .Mac era)?
[With respect to backup,] Shipping two mechanisms with the device is better than shipping none.
Android devices come with two mechanisms to install non-Play Store software: adb install and "Unknown sources". Shipping two mechanisms with the device is better than shipping none.
Umm... I was arguing for an internal SDCard/reader - what you described. What you may or may not have thought of was that the person I was responding to was talking about AN EXTERNAL CARDREADER/drive. Why would an SDCard, put in my phone, be one more thing to carry around?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).