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.'"

Comments

Re:GOOD !! THEY BREAK UN SANCTIONS !!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have trouble faulting a company from Taiwan for disregarding the UN, as the UN insists on disregarding Taiwan.

It's because they removed the SD Card

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:It's because they removed the SD Card

[pstorry]

I can agree with this.

I've got a HTC Desire Z, which is coming up for an upgrade on my contract. As a tablet, I have a HTC Flyer (bought at steep discount recently).

The phone has just a touch more than 32Gb of storage used between internal and external combined. The Flyer, with 32Gb internal AND a 32Gb SD card, is doing fine.

I really want a HTC One X. It's a straight up choice between that and a Samsung Galaxy S3. The HTC's build quality is better (mmmm, polycarbonate!) and it has HTC Sense - which I am used to and quite like.
But I know that the moment I move to the HTC One X, I'll have to trim a few MP3s out just to do the migration. Now, perhaps that's no bad thing. It's probably overdue in fact.
But if I buy the Samsung S3, I just throw my SD card in the back and start re-installing apps. It feels cheap and plasticky? Sure, buy a silicon skin from ebay or Amazon. Problem solved.

HTC have released a 64Gb version of the HTC One X, but it's too little too late. As a still newly released flagship version, it'll be much more expensive than the S3 by December/January when my upgrade rolls around.

So currently, I'm veering towards the Samsung. If the HTC One X had an SD card slot, the S3 would get about a second's consideration, then I'd buy the HTC anyway. Instead, I'm buying apps like HD Widgets (in the recent Play store sale) and starting to migrate my widgets from Sense ones to those where applicable.

Sorry, HTC. You've made a phone that's brilliant, but you forgot a very simple feature...

Re:It's because they removed the SD Card

[MrDoh!]

Why I loved the HTC Nexus One.
No stupid skins, just pure Android.
Fast
Zero bloatware
Updates
SD-Card
Easily unlockable bootloader
Awesome build quality
Replaceable batteries
Beautiful screen.
.
.
Reasons I dislike the new HTC phones
Terrible skins
slow (odd stutters, I think related to the skins/bloatware)
Slow updates (and CM appearing to have issues as the drivers/specs hard to get hold of)
Lack of SD-Cards (I get it, MS want's their cut, but what's the price? If it's 5bucks a device, I'm happy to pay that extra)
Locked bootloaders
Build quality falling. Pic up a HTC One S/X and on first glance it looks good, but tolerances appear to have slipped, just... not as good milling for the metal.
Non-replaceable batteries.
.
.
Screens are still good though, the contrast is great. The Camera was great quality too (though not THE most important item on a phone). .
.
HTC, look, you're stepping away from why your phones were so beloved at the time. You're letting 'idiot marketing/execs' get in the way of /really/ listening to your customers who know what they like and WANT to use your phones, but are being put off by terrible decisions. Seriously, everything we liked about your phones in the first place, you've got rid of. Who's brainwave WAS this to get rid of everything that made your phones so good?

Re:It's because they removed the SD Card

[MoreDruid]

Don't get me wrong, I fell in love with the specs and screen as well. I still like the model, I just happened to have gotten a lousy unit and HTC has been very reluctant to help me out for about 3 months now which is dissappointing if you've just shelled out 579 Euros (almost $ 750) for a smartphone. When I went shopping for it it was a toss-up between the SIII and the One X and brand loyalty (and the fact that I think that the blue plasticy shell of the SIII is hideous) made me choose the HTC. I've owned the Touch, Desire and bought the Wildfire for my kid and they were all good phones, where everything just worked. There are more people than just the ones on the XDA board, like I said, 2 family members have the same issue as I have but didn't notice it because they don't use the navigation on the phone.

The guys that do the pickup do all the pickups for HTC in the Netherlands and at the 3rd visit (I got the same driver each time) he told me they were picking up lots of the HTC Ones, a lot of Apple iPhones but very few Samsungs, and those were mostly by user defect (cracked screen, etc).

All that leads me to not recommending it. However: if the unit you get doesn't have issues it's a very good phone, I like the build quality and feel of it, very good phone quality, the CPU is fast and doesn't drain the battery too fast, the screen is very nice and bright, the OS is responsive, basically everything you'd ask from a top model, and something I've come to expect by using my previous HTC phones.

Pressure from competition? yeah right

[mybeat]

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.

Haha

[binarylarry]

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.

Re:Haha

[erroneus]

That's kind of the lesson here isn't it?

The Android phone market isn't quite what I would call "settled" or mature just yet. People are still exploring them and building their expectations of them. This means that when people see something in another phone that they can't or don't have in theirs, the bridge between consumer and manufacturer/seller goes up like flash paper.

HTC decided that the carriers are their customers instead of the people who actually hold the phones in their hands. So yeah, they were pretty douchey if you like to put it that way. That and HTC isn't well known for putting out "premium" handsets. (If they actually make premium handsets, I don't know.) So what you get are pretty low expectations and a lot of frustrations.

It doesn't hurt that the "anyone who does phone business with Microsoft is doomed" tradition is alive and well. That problem has been on-going for a very long time and I still haven't seen a success story yet.

Simple

[Propaganda13]

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.

Yep! Good riddance!

[Evtim]

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...

Re:Done with HTC

[medcalf]

Actually, I SSH into servers from my iPhone frequently. If the virtual keyboard works for you in other contexts, it works just fine for SSH. (iSSH, the program I use, has a couple of handy controls floating on the screen that give access to things like an ESC key and arrow keys that the virtual keyboard itself lacks. I tried out a different terminal program for a while that used gestures to do the same thing, but it just wasn't as easy to use of a solution.) So bottom line is, virtual keyboards don't have any intrinsic issues with SSH use for common system administration tasks.

HTC should make some more models

[alen]

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

Re:HTC should make some more models

[Antimatter3009]

I think you've got it more right than anyone else here. Features like an SD card and removable battery are nice, but very few people care. Just look at how well the iPhone does with neither. What really makes a difference is how you sell your product. Samsung and Apple sell the exact* same phone across all carriers. Then they advertise that single phone straight to consumers, knowing that the carrier they're on doesn't matter. HTC sells the One X exclusively on AT&T. They sell Evos on Sprint. They sell Droid Incredibles on Verizon. They can't advertise a single product line to consumers, leaving them pretty much reliant on the carriers to push their phones for them. What do they expect?

When people think Apple, they think iPhone. Samsung, they think Galaxy S. HTC, they think... well, probably nothing. None of their product lines have a strong brand identity, so people won't ask for them. And when people won't ask for you product, how do you plan to sell any when you're competing against the products people will ask for?

* I realize some internal components are different, but as far as the average consumer is concerned, they're exactly the same.

Great phones, poor marketing

[flar2]

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.

This is unfortunate

[AbRASiON]

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)

Re:Sad

[compro01]

Might try a keyboard with arrow keys. Hacker's keyboard is a nice one.

Though the keys get kinda small if you use the full 5-row layout in portrait mode, at least on my Incredible S.