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HTC Losing Ground Faster Than RIM or Nokia
zacharye writes "How bad is HTC's current tailspin? So bad it makes Nokia look like a growth company. HTC's handset volume declined by -43% in the autumn quarter vs. Nokia's -23% volume decline. This is very interesting because HTC is using Android, the world's most popular smartphone OS, that is powering 40% annualized growth among its vendors. Nokia is limping along with an unholy mix of the obsolete Symbian platform, the moribund S40 feature phone platform and a niche OS called Windows Phone."
So that means its volume increased by 43%?
Okay, so HTC took a 43% hit on total units shipped in the Autumn quarter...the same quarter that the iPhone 5 came out. How heavy a hit did they have in Summer and Spring? It's happened before that when a new iPhone comes out, that's pretty much all anyone buys for a short while. Nokia's decline, on the other hand, has been going on consistently for some years now. A 23% drop for them means, what...that they delivered 23 less phones than the previous quarter?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I was rather surprised to hear that HTC is actually part of Via, and here I was thinking Via only produced crap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Technologies
Except for also LG, Huawai, ZTE, Sony, and many others. The only one i know that doesn't make any money for anyone is Windows Phone
Nokia is still limping along with Meego remnants, (and did that team kick-ass to deliver the N9 on-time, just before they were fired). There must still be some semblance of a paper trail left! Do not forget Meego! (the other OS).
Godspeed Jolla!
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
I stopped paying attention to HTC the day they declared they wouldn't make any more phones with keyboards. That was what they had over Samsung and Motorolla. Now they are just make the same kind of phones with lesser build quality.
And Google! Don't forget them!
That could and should have been *their thing*. If they are just making the same type of phone as everyone else, may as well buy a Samsung.
For some reason in Europe, you tend to see a lot of stores advertising "-50% off!" sales and such.
Apparently double negative percentages have the opposite meaning in parts of the world.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
New players enter the market, change the landscape, the old players adapt or die. Isn't this how it's supposed to work?
That reminds me, the ol' HTC Touch Pro is due for retirement soon...
crazy dynamite monkey
They were doing fine selling Android last year.
Then they got the brilliant idea that people don't want replaceable batteries or expandable storage and created the One line around that.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That and dont they have locked bootloaders?
Yes, though there's an official method available to unlock it for most devices.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Yes, really, by a large margin.
And Kyocera!
HTC seriously underestimated the power of their Android enthusiasts. They went the direction of Moto and started locking everything down. Every Android enthusiast before that point went around telling _everyone else_ to get an HTC. Once they screwed that vocal minority, everyone started pushing Samsung. Samsung doesn't cryptographically sign their bootloaders, meaning they can be unlocked without some big-brother style registration. This means Android enthusiasts push Samsung now.
Never underestimate the power of an enthusiastic geek.
Also, I want a Nokia with Android.
Would it be faster?
I've got a one x and it's a fantastic phone. Most people don't care about adding memory as it has 32mb which is really enough. The battery i@ a bad idea but then my last HTC's battery is going strong 2.5 years on.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
A lot of business writing is poor, but Michael Porter is the exception to the rule – and I think his 5 force analysis comes into play here.
Basically, HTC is in a highly completive market with low barriers to entry. It’s hard to make their phone unique – anybody can use Android – so basically they are in a commodity market where they have to compete on price. (and by price I mean value. Honda and Toyota thrived for years offering basic, commodity cars. Nothing exciting but they did give you value for your money.)
On the other hand, Nokia offers the best Windows 8 phone. If you like that OS you almost have to go with Nokia. Gives them a little pricing power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_five_forces_analysis
Yeah, just occasionally, products do poorly because they're not the best products.
Crazy, I know! ;)
Not to mention there are lots of (relatively) low-end Android phones - a space Apple refuses to compete in. You can now get non-subsidized Android phones for under $100.
#DeleteChrome
You can unlock all HTC bootloaders - officially, there is a website by HTC dedicated to this.
I used to love HTC phones and sought them out as well-built and designed devices. I really wanted a One X, but their insistence on selling it without a removable battery or expandable memory was a turn-off. Same thing with the new Google Nexus phone coming out next week. I want a new phone. I want an android phone. I don't want a sealed, non-expandable black box. If I wanted that, I'd buy from Apple. At least with them, I can get a really good warranty and support program.
is that you end up trying to differentiate primarily in hardware or price. You're limited as to what you can do on the hardware side by an OS you don't control. There can only be so many successful players in a market like that.
Why's that? so that way there are 100 million starving children 10 years from now instead of 20 million? Your entire argument is a fallacy.
This is what Microsoft has failed to realize, and what Samsung and Apple have capitalized on.
They don't sell the OS, and they don't sell the company brand name. iOS updates aren't even tied to hardware announcements anymore. Samsung never even mentions Android or Google in their Galaxy S3 ads. They barely mention the name "Samsung".
They sell the device itself. When the average person walks into a store or clicks through a new contract online, they're looking to buy the new iPhone, not an iOS device or an Apple device, they want an "iPhone". /. of course, in its geeky obsessery over software and pastime of using microsoft as a punching bag, usually misses this. But HTC and Microsoft has missed it as well. No one's going to ask for a "One X" because what the heck is that? No one wants a "Windows 8", because who cares about the OS anymore besides nerds? If Nokia and HTC and Microsoft want to get back into the game they need to start highlighting and marketing their devices. They need to make people want a Lumia, or a new Surface, or a new... a new device brand name altogether for HTC.
Just like people don't buy a Ford, they buy a Mustang, people also don't buy an Apple or a Microsoft. They buy an Ipad or a Nexus 7.
I love my HTC One. For many years now, when my cell phone battery goes bad I cannot find one from qualified sources, and the made-in-China crap available on eBay doesn't last a month. Besides, the phone tech is soo outdated I want a new phone, and my provider's plan "forces" the upgrade to be almost free. As in beer, anyway. The One has more memory than I'll ever use, and I have it automatically uploading to Google and DropBox so if I have to delete photos I already have them saved in multiple places.
One reason I chose HTC was their support for professional cycling. So I was a bit pissed when they dropped the team. Now that the sport is eating its tail (I refer to the Lance Armstrong debacle) it will be even harder to get major corporations to sponsor teams. Most recent example: Rabobank, not only a team sponsor but a major sponsor of the Tour of California. Their guy won this year, and now the team is gone. Sad.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
While shopping for a new phone during the summer nearly every store tried to talk me out of HTC
I had researched extensively and found the HTC One V had the best camera on the market for a phone under $200 (with no contract), and was small in size (contrary to the current trend I prefer small phones) and had Android 4 out of the box.
I walked out of one store because the pushed samsung so hard, and out of another store since they no longer carried HTC. Only at the third store did I find the phone.
Incidentally this phone's camera is amazing if you're a photographer and like to tinker. It gives you true autofocus. Exposure control to plus or minus two stops, and a mode that brackets exposure (-1, 0, +1) and puts the three images together to give high contrast scenes beautifully smooth detail.
How is Google making money out of Android?
Really? Last numbers I saw put the iPhone ahead of Android.
Was that in 2008?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
it's interesting because just some 6 months ago people were having htc as a poster child of why embracing winphone is good for nokia. no failure possible there, just look at htc !
meego was nokia's winning ticket. they traded it for another dose of "free" drugs.
Rich
Losing volume is bad and all, but what effect is this actually having on their profits? When the numbers were reported last quarter, it was estimated that Apple was bringing in 77% of smartphone profits, Samsung had 22%, HTC had 1%, and the rest were in the red with a net loss. If HTC is still profitable then they may very well still be in a better position than some of their competitors who have been losing money hand over fist despite (and in some cases because of) shipping more units.
Note: I'm not defending them or suggesting they're profitable. I'm simply turning the discussion from volume to profit.
Those are subsidized. you would need to pay over 300 without a contract.
If something declines by -43%, you're counting up, not down.
This signature intentionally left blank.
By having many more consumers subject to ubiquitous ads and tracking for their analytics platform...
What is killing HTC is that:
1) They did not get their flagship devices out fast enough.
2) Their high-end devices are not on enough USA carriers.
3) They didn't advertise enough.
They make really good phones both in the past and present. Samsung is just railroading them by getting their high end model on almost all the carriers and then absolutely blanketing the market with effective advertising.
I will be seriously disappointed in consumerism in general if HTC shuts down, they do really solid and impressive hardware, and make outstanding changes to Android to make it more effective and more accessible. People go look at their stuff, it's seriously competitive with Samsung's stuff, and it's better supported after release.
Our company is moving from Sprint to AT&T and we looked at both flagship Android phones (the One X and the S3) ... it was pretty simple - Samsung makes a better phone for our needs:
The whole non-user-replaceable battery deal (a first for HTC in this gen of phones) is beyond Apple-lame...why clone that feature? For the amount of use we put into our units, batteries need to be replaced...I already have an extended run battery in mine...
Lack of SD card. Portable is better, but I've heard AT&T was the driver on the lack of SD card slot the One X (since the Sprint variant does have one) ... but they let/wanted the Galaxy to have it?
Do you not understand what non-subsidized means?
You just compared an Android sub-$100 phone to an iPhone for $2475 ($99 + $2376 contract)....
At the time I was phone shopping last year, there were no keyboard-phones that had specs near the GS2. The evo3d came out awhile later but 3d on a phone isn't really a killer feature.
The GS2 is reliable, and hackable. Without competitors offering something to differentiate, I went with Samsung.
HAD HTC offered a competitively powerful phone with extra functionality (like a keyboard), I would have gone for that.
Hopefully they'll pull through and survive to the next lineup. I'd still like to see a keyboard phone for the next gen.
Could HAVE
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
It serves HTC right. Hopefully they OneX taught them a lesson, and next year's models will have batteries that end users can swap/upgrade, microSD sockets, and real two-stage camera buttons.
Seriously. Name one single thing that makes the HTC OneX a better phone than the Galaxy S3. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. If HTC had given it a two-stage camera button, or even any dedicated camera shutter button AT ALL, at least some people would have been left wringing their hands and agonizing between it and the S3. They didn't, so that's one opportunity to differentiate themselves for roughly 17 cents that HTC squandered.
The OneX has a sealed battery. Right there, they've instantly written off anyone who won't buy a phone that can't be used with a 2800mAH+ battery, and anybody who expects to be able to swap batteries at will. The Galaxy S3 allows you to do both. The OneX allows you to do neither. Strike two.
The OneX doesn't have a microSD card. The Galaxy S3 does. Once again, for the price of something that costs about 12 cents in HTC quantities, they blew it with a large segment of the Android market who won't even give a phone that lacks microSD expansion capabilities a second look.
Let's not forget HTC's nasty habit of releasing monolithic kernels that can't be built from source because the proprietary bits were just ripped out before they shat the source onto the curb and said "here it is". Samsung cleanly separates out their proprietary kernel code as proper loadable kernel modules, just like god and Linus intended. However, I'll only count this as a half-strike against HTC, because historically, they DO at least tend to release new kernels in half the time (or less) that it takes Samsung to release new loadable kernel modules for new kernels. This is a prime example of an area where HTC could spank Samsung... if they were to commit to separating out all of their proprietary bits as proper loadable kernel modules and released automated builds more or less immediately upon getting their hands on Google's new source (and in a "rapidly timely manner" if changes had to be made to fix problems with the automated builds), they'd have a HUGE competitive advantage over Samsung in this regard. They could just release them as unsupported early-access betas, and treat the users at XDA like a vast unpaid QA program.
It's not like HTC is uncreative. The Evo 3D had a very cool & compelling feature. It might not have been all that useful in daily life, but it was definitely a cool feature to have. I know lots of people who didn't really USE it, but I know of very few who genuinely wished their phone didn't have that feature at all. Most of the complaints about it were due to some of the hardware design compromises that were made to keep the cost down by limiting the resolution and bitrate at which you could capture in stereo.
Anyway, the point is that HTC decided to rest on its laurels and release a phone that doesn't suck, but doesn't really do anything BETTER than the Galaxy S3 does. It's basically the same price, targets the same market, and offers nothing to let its owners stand in front of a group of S3 owners and proudly say, "My phone does ______ better than yours does." In the Apple universe, annual incremental upgrades are doled out as the norm, and users applaud politely & line up to buy this year's refinement. In the Android universe, you have to either knock people's socks off and delight buyers every single year, or be content to sell phones that are basically 'free' no-name commodities.
Lest anybody accuse me of being a Samsung fanboy, I'll be the first to say that I *want* HTC to make phones that beat the crap out of Samsung's, because then Samsung will turn around and try harder to make phones that beat the crap out of HTC's. Then I want Google to use Motorola as its bully pulpit to pull the rug out from under both, and raise the hardware stakes even higher with phones that have unlocked bootloaders & make Samsung's and HTC's flagship models look like antiques, the same way the Nexus One did to the phones that came before it.
Meego was fantasy bullshit. Maemo would have been their winning ticket if they hadn't changed everything repeatedly (look at the early mock-up preview Harmattan slides at the NDC - the final product was diametrically different), and jumped into bed with an 800lb gorilla who had no interest in what Nokia was doing. Then again, Nokia had such a huge range of problems I could write a whole book about them. My history with them doesn't go back long enough to know what it was like in the OSSO days, but I can tell you they were a train-wreck in the meego days.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
It'll take a lot of ads to pay back the $12 billion spent on Motorola (and don't forget: they lost $500 million last quarter.). Hell, I doubt they've even made up the $300 million or so they spent on android itself, never mind the continual development.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I seriously considered the One X, but the lack of removable battery and storage put me off and i got the Galaxy S3 instead. It's a shame, because i'm sure the One X is a better phone in many ways.
Htc one x could of been a contender to the galaxy s3 if they didn't go full retard on design and put a non removable battery and no expandable memory on their flagship phone.
I don't care for either, but opted for the better screen, camera and a thinner but way stronger case at a lower price. HTC is simply outmarketeered.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Android is not making money
You know, this is an interesting inversion of the Broken Window fallacy.
In the former, you destroy real value to make imaginary dollars move around. In this case, we have real value being created each time someone finds the software to be useful, even though most players don't earn more than a sliver of profit.
I argued with them for like 5 hours over several phone conversations. (All of which I recorded).
You need a life, a job and a girlfriend (in more or less that order).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Sony:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/02/sony-loses-312m-in-last-quarter_n_1731696.html
Sony Loses $312m In Last Quarter On Weak Gaming And Mobile Sales
ZTE:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/10/15/zte-warns-of-upcoming-quarterly-and-9m-loss.aspx
ZTE Warns of Upcoming Losses
Huawai:
They don't report profits AFAIK.
HTC is basically an example of why Windows phone might be good for nokia. If Nokia can't compete with samsung on android they need to do so elsewhere.
Nokia's problem was that they really didn't have compelling software for the future. That was clearly iOS, Android or Windows phone (and probably not all 3, and probably not anything else). They can't do iOS. So that left 'just another android maker' which, while certainly possible, didn't seem like a great strategy - and it hasn't worked well for HTC, or be the lead windows phones guys and get a boatload of money from microsoft.
The thing with being 'just another android maker' is that people can immediately jump ship if your product is even marginally worse than the competition, it's like first past the post voting the guy with 50% + 1 votes gets 100% of the power, well, if you look at the hardware Nokia has been releasing for windows phone, frankly, they're a generation behind the competition (at least). That's bad. Very bad. As an android maker they could be losing money like crazy *and* not getting a cheque from microsoft.
As it is, they made the long play gamble. If windows 8 takes off, especially if microsoft can pitch some sort of integrated microsoft entertainment experience that people can actually tangibly understand (and tied into xbl and business productivity etc.) they could be in the right place when the time comes. I'm not a fan of windows 8, but that doesn't mean the market as a whole will agree with me, and basically everyone may as well read tea leaves to find out if this is going to go well or not.
I've seen lots of reviews of the One X and One V, and while many have praised the cameras, the photos they've shown off have all had serious issues with over-saturated colours. Granted, over-saturated colours is what the iPhone 4 got all its praise for: it's eye-catching, even though distorted. My colleague bought a One X for the camera, and is very unhappy with it. Samsung's cameras are far superior.
From the Windows Mobile, generic brand days of the HTC Universal (T-Mobile MDA Pro), HTC Advantage (T-Mobile Ameo - 5 inch touch-screen device with a built-in 1.8 inch hard-drive), HTC Touch Dual, and then I moved to Android with them - onto the HTC Desire HD.
All have been great phones in their way (Except the Ameo, which was a lousy phone, but an awesome smartphone in a pre-smartphone world) - and I loved my first step into Android with the Desire HD - a proper flag-ship phone for them, at the time of launch.
But the generic shite they've been releasing recently, with zero innovation, zero risk - it's been cookie-cutter Android phones.
HTC has become a short way of saying 3.7 inch - 4.8 inch touch screen with so-so camera, so-so processor, so-so RAM, no replaceable battery, and no expandable storage. There's nothing really 'wrong' with them, but they're lacking something interesting. For a company that thought "Hey, there might be a market for a 5 inch Windows Mobile 5.0 device wrapped in leather, 2 inches thick, that can only be used as a phone with a Bluetooth headset, with a magnetic bolt-on keyboard" and took the risk to create it in 2007, they've become a risk-averse generic Android manufacturer.
Which is why my new phone is a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 - my first ever Samsung device. It it provides something unique. HTC is no longer unique. They're the beige box of the Android world, currently. I hope they recover - but it's looking unlikely.
I seriously considered the One X, but the lack of removable battery and storage put me off and i got the Galaxy S3 instead. It's a shame, because i'm sure the One X is a better phone in many ways.
I went through exactly the same thought processes, and came to the same conclusion. The HTC One X with 32GB was about the same price as the Samsung Galaxy S3 with 16GB (the small price difference was not an issue). The HTC was rated as having a display at least as good as the Galaxy, but the HTC Sense interface was a minor put-off. The killer in my decision making was that the HTC has no SDHC card slot and is lumbered with an unreplaceable battery, while the Samsung has both SDHC and a replaceable battery. I bought the Samsung and a 32GB card, which together cost more than the HTC.
The other dumb thing HTC did was discontinue phones with keyboards. My daughter has a Desire Z, and probably won't replace it for a long time because there is nothing on the market to compete with it. If any phone were available with a good display and a keyboard, I'd probably have bought one, even if its price were higher than the Galaxy S3.
If anyone from HTC is reading this, they have a few things to take home and beat into whatever remains from their marketing department: (i) expandable storage is life or death for a phone, (ii) a replaceable battery is very very attractive, (iii) physical keyboards get customer loyalty.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Releasing 11 different models between April 2012 and July 2012 probably has something to do with it aswell: Source. That's what really killed HTC, releasing too many phones and not supporting any of them.
Two of my friends bought HTC phones a year ago, one bought the original HTC Evo, the other bought an HTC Evo 3D. Now both of them say they'll never purchase another HTC phone again. I was lucky, I almost bought the original HTC Evo when it came out but I ended up waiting and getting a Nexus S instead. Now I'm running official Jelly Bean while my buddies are forced to use custom firmware to get updates.
HTC did this to themselves.
I went through the same evaluation and looked at the fact that i had never even once swapped batteries in any phone I've ever owned.
I found a $50 external battery pack that can recharge the phone four times on a single 5 hour recharge. Then i found the phone gets 18 hours of run time on a single charge, so the number of times I would actually need the battery pack were vanishingly small.
So I dismissed all the swappable battery posers, bought the HTC One X, and it is the best phone I've ever seen.
Battery swapping is seldom necessary, and when you do need more power an external battery pack make way more sense. It has a lot of other uses.
HTC is on lean times because it doesn't have the marketing clout of Samsung. Not because their phones are inferior.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
for all those urging Nokia to go Android, or lamenting they didn't ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Samsung didn't kill HTC, HTC killed themselves.
When HTC came out with the original Evo they had arguable the best phone on the market. That success was short lived though. They started churning out dozens of phones and they didn't support any of them with updates. They burned their own customers and people turned elsewhere (mainly Samsung).
If they were smart they would've released 1-2 phones a year at most. The Evo was a decent phone, they could've made that their flagship with yearly updates. The new One X looked good aswell, but how many One X variants did they make? One X, One S, One XL, One V. They diluted their own brand.
The iPhone 4 is still for sale, and it's low-end compared to most Android phones at a comparable price.
I believe they also dabbled in locked bootloaders which didn't help. While the root/rom enthusiast community is small, they are influential.
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
Thanks everyone for the heads-up.
I have an older HTC smartphone and I really like it. An HTC Hero now way outdated and underpowered. Its small when everyone was going big. It has been very reliable, it uses a pretty standard USB connector that ive never had any problems with.
Compare this to my wife's Samsung Moment, we have had to replace the power adapter 5 times because the little conenctor is just too thin to take the abuse of regular use.
I had been looking at buying another HTC but now I probably wont. It's too bad because I really like my phone and the new HTC's look good.
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
More poor incredible 2 (not really that old!) is still waiting on an update to ICS...promised a long time ago...based on my experience with HTC, my next phone will not be from them!
It's also interesting to note that this guy implies that HTC is only an Android platform, when in fact, if you just take look at HTCs' actual home page.
What comes front and center of that main page is their failed HTC Windows phones and their failed 'Beats Audio' music platform, with their Android phones being relegated to the right-side menu, and completely stripped out of all Android branding, or markings (as if it had been purposefully done that way).
So if you ask me, what's dragging down HTC is not the fact that they've stopped having replaceable battery covers, and stopped having sdcard slots, in one of their lines, it's more the fact that they've repeatedly launched and relaunched Windows Phones and 'Beats Audio' -- wasting all their efforts and money on these ventures, when in fact, they should just have focused on promoting their Android offerings with one or two focused messages (that people actually cared about).
I won't disagree about issues with product strategy, but I do question the comment about the HTC Evo 3D not being a good phone. I got one as soon as they came out, and other than the lousy camera functionality (there's a good quarter second delay between pushing the button to take a picture and the picture actually being taken, which results in shaky or out of focus pictures) it''s been an excellent phone. Over a year later and there are no scratches or dings on it even though I don't use a case. It still performs very snappy even with Sprint's crapware that's loaded on it, and battery life is still very good (I usually charge every other day). It's one of the better smartphones I've ever owned.
(i) expandable storage is life or death for a phone, (ii) a replaceable battery is very very attractive,
There's some caveats here. The iPhone has never had these features, and it's always sold like hotcakes. Obviously, HTC looked at Apple, did a "monkey see monkey do", and decided they could reduce costs on this phone by copying Apple. What they failed to realize is that Apple's market is very different from their own, and that Android shoppers, unlike most Apple ones, actually care about these features. You're not going to get anywhere trying to sell Apple clones; people who like Apple stuff are going to buy the real thing. The key to success is differentiation; be the things that Apple isn't, and serve a different market of people who don't want Apple stuff and want something different and better in many ways. I love the fact that my HTC Sensation 4G has both a replaceable battery and expandable SDHC storage, and I don't care if it adds a measly 1mm to the phone's thickness.
The 'current' home page design could also be largely a result of the fact that Windows Phone 8 is launching right now....
In my opinion, HTC has dramatically fallen out of favor among the enthusiast community due to heavy lockdown and closed source drivers. This is in fact the reason I have sworn off ever buying another HTC phone again. That might be spilling over to the regular consumers.
In my case it has, because I've recommended to everybody that I have talked to android about to stay away from HTC.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
In my opinion, HTC has dramatically fallen out of favor among the enthusiast community due to heavy lockdown and closed source drivers. This is in fact the reason I have sworn off ever buying another HTC phone again. That might be spilling over to the regular consumers.
In my case it has, because I've recommended to everybody that I have talked to android about to stay away from HTC.
But you are talking about one one hundredth of one percent of the Android user base.
In relative terms, that issue matters to nobody. The vast majority of android users never give that a second thought.
Further, you place the blame on the wrong party. Blame the carriers.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
You are an idiot. Also completely wrong.
Why???
I bought my iPhone 4s for $729, taxes included, and yes, it is factory unlocked and I have used it with about 10 carriers in 8 countries. Apple are happy to sell you an unlocked one, you just have to ask for it.
Sony isn't making that much money, and rightly so, i wouldn't touch the xerpia line with a ten foot pole. They are the most locked down non upgraded android there is (and upgrades and openness is the main advantage of android).
Rocket Surgeon.
HTC phones are very good. The only problem with them that stands out above any others, is their lack of updates to the phones they offer. Their product line seems to come with 1 major android update and then they drop maintaining it and move onto the next model. Most of their phones (after their latest updates to them) at this point are running pre ICS despite being able easily run JB. Some companies, like samsung, have maintained updates to their phones making them or other alternative companies much more desirable. Android itself has undergone alot rapid change and companies like HTC that don't work on keeping up with android releases for all but their newest phones are going to loose all desirability.
http://interserver.net/
Are you serious? Everywhere I went they were pushing the HTC One. I kept having to tell them no SD card was a deal killer for me. If I wanted a phone with no replaceable battery and no SD card slot I'd buy an iPhone. I finally found someone that still had the Samsung I wanted. Strangely everyone had plenty of HTC Ones.
You've never swapped a battery in phones so you made the decision that felt right to you. Most people seem to prefer being able to swap batteries out so HTC made a decision that was bad for them and HTC. I happen to love linux but if Dell was to decide tomorrow to stop shipping windows and put linux on all their computers I think Dell would tank quickly. Just because I love linux doesn't mean squat to 98+% of the people out there.
I can't say one way or the other about the cameras. I've never bought a phone for a camera or a camera for a phone. I can see that many people, maybe even most, use their phone as their camera but I really haven't seen any phone that takes pictures as good as a good camera.
I've seen this a lot. Guys that are enthusiasts have a lot of influence. I came late to the smartphone market but a friend of mine sold a lot of iPhones for Apple by showing off what his could do. It didn't help that he had owned the original droid and ditched it for the iPhone the minute Verizon started selling it. When a guy that's obviously very knowledgeable starts telling his friends how much better he likes the iPhone than the Droids it is better than any TV ad.
HTC is on lean times because all the Android phones they make have been shoddy, unreliable, locked-down crap built on marketing to rubes - BEATS BY DR. DRE, anyone?
Why do you think Google switches Nexus manufacturers every six months? Because HTC burned the brand so badly with early-adopters the first time out with incompetent technical support and nonexistent warranty coverage.
Uhh, I've had to replace batteries in multiple phones. For the amount of travel I do, I often have to charge when the power is getting too low and I don't get the recharge cycle life out of the lithium cells. For my HTC EVO (Replaced earlier this year with a Galaxy S3) Two extended life batteries in two years, so one year per battery.
If I were to get the HTC One X I'd be replacing the whole phone every year and that just doesn't make any sense unless I like Apple Products.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
No upgrades after about 9 months was my problem too but I stuck with it on Android 2.3.. but most of that was caused by the lack of memory that came with the EVO. I still like HTC Sense and the weather widget, especially the wiper arms that would come across the home screen when it was raining or snowing. That kind of humor you just don't get on a Windows Mobile device. Too bad they don't have it as something you can buy on Google Play.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Well, I guess when people view smartphones as disposable tech, they don't care if they can replace the battery. That being said, rechargeable batteries do go bad at some point and they will need to be replaced at some point.
According to this article, Google only generated $500 million in revenue from 2008-2011. Granted, things may (probably) have sped up since then, but I think what Android really does for Google is that it locks people into the Google ecosystem--that is, the earnings are more indirect than direct.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
(contrary to the current trend I prefer small phones)
Interesting that you mention that. I had completely failed to notice, but after years of smaller and smaller phones, the trend for at least smartphones is now larger and larger.
Incidentally, if you already knew which phone you wanted, wouldn't you have been better off buying it online instead of in a store?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
But you are talking about one one hundredth of one percent of the Android user base. In relative terms, that issue matters to nobody.
These are the "early adopters"; the (former) HTC fanatics. The are the people that buy a phone based on specifications and potential. Everybody else buys a phone based on what other people say. If the early adopters don't buy, the first followers don't come in. If they don't come in then the rest of the customers never arrive.
Further, you place the blame on the wrong party. Blame the carriers.
Every serious phone manufacturer gets around this by providing both carrier locked phones with whatever the carrier wants and completely unlocked phones without subsidies designed for people that care.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
RIM is losing ground, but it has the BB encrypted messaging services, and millions of users worldwide are need that particular service.
Nokia, on the other hand, has the brand "Nokia".
HTC is losing more ground than Nokia or RIM simply because of bad designs.
HTC has neither a strong brand name like "Nokia" nor BB's worldwide encrypted messaging service.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
...as long as you sign a contract for $$$$. And I must agree that the Iphone 4 is indeed low-end compared to most Android phones!
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
I had an HTC Desire HD, which came out in October 2010. It was the phone of the moment. Bought an extra battery for holidays and it already came with an 8GB sdcard, very very nice. I bought it in February 2011. In October 2011, Ice Cream Sandwich came out. So, the actual model was 1 year old. Time passed. It was unclear what the update schedule was. Then, in April 2012 or so, it was there: "Yes!", HTC said. "Desire HD will be getting the ICS update!" Finally! About friggin time. May... June... July... HTC: "Oh, no, the best experience is with Android 2.3.x, so we won't update the Desire HD to ICS." Fuck you, HTC. Fuck you twice. I gave up, rooted my DHD and later on I had a fully functional Jelly Bean even. That was the first and last time I got an HTC. I also managed to break it (dropping it from the 3rd floor balcony is a bad idea) and have now moved to a Galaxy S3, since I'm so content with my fully functional Samsung laptop (running openSUSE). I'll let my wallet do the talking and looking at HTC's decline, I'm not the only one.
Here's the secret to immortality:
$100 + 1 PAYG sim $10 = $70
I went through the same evaluation and looked at the fact that i had never even once swapped batteries in any phone I've ever owned.
Yeah, it occurred to me that i'd had my Desire for 2 years and the battery had shown no sign of deterioration and that i had a16GB SD card in the Desire and never filled it up, so the 16GB internal storage in the One X would probably be enough. However, it was a toss up between the One X and the S3 and those two factors pushed me towards the S3.
A few weeks after getting the S3, its mic died and i had to send it off to get fixed. The battery in the Desire died at the same time! If i hadn't been able to change the battery i would have been stuck without a backup.phone and would have had to buy one. I knew i'd.made the right decision then.
Gee, where did they get that idea from? There must have been some kind of super hit phone that didn't have replaceable batteries or expandable storage....
Meego was fantasy bullshit. Maemo would have been their winning ticket
They were perfectly capable of doing either or both. There's been a huge amount of propaganda trying to say that Nokia was in a state of panic. In fact they could afford to keep paying for development more or less indefinitely; even whilst developing four platforms at once (Symbian, S40, Meego & Maemo) they had huge revenues and large profits (their "failed" smartphones were actually delivering increasing profits; not just sales) just before they Eloped the company with the famous "let's burn the platforms" speech. Symbian had increasing sales and their low end phone were stable so they had the market access which could allow them to sell the phones. The only things they had to do was select one within half a year, keep with it as a main priority for a year or two and maintain backwards compatibility with Symbian and series 40 accessories and they would have a good chance of developing an "eco-system".
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Another benefit of a removable battery is that I can use an external charger in places I wouldn't trust leaving my cell phone out charging.
I can't imagine buying a phone without a swapable battery.
Sony:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/02/sony-loses-312m-in-last-quarter_n_1731696.html
Sony Loses $312m In Last Quarter On Weak Gaming And Mobile Sales
...but Sony's mobile phones are not in that Division they are in Sony has their own Game division "Mobile Products & Communications" Should we see what they say!!!
"Primarily due to the lowering of the annual unit sales forecast for PCs, sales are expected to be lower than the May
forecast. Due to the above-mentioned decrease in sales and the impact of unfavorable exchange rates, operating
results are expected to be significantly below the May forecast. Due to the consolidation of Sony Mobile, sales
are expected to increase significantly year-on-year. Operating results are expected to deteriorate significantly
year-on-year primarily due to the large remeasurement gain recorded in the prior fiscal year for Sony Mobile.
On a pro forma basis, had Sony Mobile been fully consolidated from the beginning of the previous fiscal year, a
significant increase in sales and a significant improvement in operating results would be anticipated."
That right ladies and gentleman Android is profitable for Sony, Microsoft Windows isn't!!
These are the financial figures http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/index.html
It'll take a lot of ads to pay back the $12 billion spent on Motorola (and don't forget: they lost $500 million last quarter.). Hell, I doubt they've even made up the $300 million or so they spent on android itself, never mind the continual development.
...and Money from the Play store!! :) I did notice they his the 25Billion Apps Downloaded before Apple :)
Motorola did take a loss of $500 last quarter, but most of that was one off restructuring cost!
Seriously that $300million on Android is the best money they ever spent.
What are you talking about Googles Revenues for 2010 was $29,321,000,000 and in 2011 $37,905,000,000
They have already have revenues of $30Billion this year alone.
http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html
Why is nobody reporting on Apples massive losses in marketshare even after the launch of the iPhone5 where are the articles calling the iPhone a failure, and the end of Apple.
Seriously 23% to 15% that is pretty serious.
I have a htc one x, and have never used 'cloud storage'. The one x comes with 32gb of ssd.. if you actually burn through that quickly in a fast way that doesn't lend itself to dumping data onto another machine at home between uses, I dare say you're probably using a phone for something it shouldn't be.
Not to mention, the read/write speeds of sd are shite compared to ssd, so when it does come time to dump the contents of the sd card, you have a long wait ahead of you.
Dude, fatphil and I worked on it, so we know how fucked up it was, from the inside. Stop repeating Ahonen's bullshit.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
In particular as Ahonen himself seems to repeat it about 20 times in every article. He really is the proverbial stuck record. It's annoying that occasionally he does have some valid observations (for example his historical figures are normally well researched), otherwise you could dismiss him as simply being a total whack-job. I imagine his home/office being like Nash's from /A Beautiful Mind/ - lots of news clipping cut out and stuck on the wall - with figures and names and dates marked in highlighter pen or circled and joined together!
May I enquire which team you were in? I don't know if we ever encountered each other on bugzilla (or IRL) but I hope I'm forgiven if I locked horns too aggressively - I did tend to get a bit passionate about work.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
In 2 years you will have a choice of iPhone or Samsung. Choose wisely.
Of course they don't. But the best camera is the one you're carrying with you, which is why camera quality can be important for a phone. And the difference between the good ones and the not so good ones is huge.
You seem to imagine you know far more about the world than you actually do. Contracts and subsidised phones aren't forced on you in the non-US.
Well ! see! This makes you the 16% so like obviously whatever!
Hey HTC, make all of your Android phones AOSP "Nexus" phones and profit!
Never said people swap batteries. I stated most people want to be able to. Even if you never use an option that doesn't mean you want that option removed. I might like to swap the battery but if I can't then I resent that you've limited what I can do with my phone. I know it may make no sense but people buy things all the time that make no sense. It's about want, not need.
While I don't swap batteries, my galaxy has hanged a couple of times requiring to remove the battery to force a restart. While my wife's HTC is great, I'm not confident of having non removable batteries. Now, on topic, I think the apple effect has launched samsung to a better position due to the patent war, altogether with an escalation in offensive advertisement from samsung.
assuming they had been able to maintain the decline to the level of 150 million units that they had originally forecast
Forecasts like that are why they are in the mess they are in. Symbian was going to be killed off as a product, anyone with a brain should have realized that was going to cause the market for symbian devices to tank.
The whole thing is gibberish anyway, MS wasn't particularly stopping them from shipping symbian devices - as long as the OS wasn't brought up to parity, it just wanted them to stay away from Android.
You don't need a battery pull to force a reboot.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
After the LG Optimus 2x (P999, G2x for T-Mobile) I won't ever touch an LG product again. After selling a bunch, they totally abandoned it. When Samsung (and others) started offering Gingerbread upgrades, LG was super late to the game and seemed to not want to offer it all. Personally I'm not sure they ever did since I went to cyanogenmod 7 before that, many months after gingerbread was generally available on Samsung devices. And forget about Ice Cream Sandwich. Meanwhile this is a very powerful phone so that is not the issue. It seems like they would rather force you to buy a new model than allow an upgrade to the OS. I put cynaogenmod for gingerbread on mine (C7) but the ICS (C9) doesn't have any official cyanogenmod support for the P999 and the unofficial one has issues with things like video. I have come to the conclusion that with new smartphones whether the hardware is the best or not (within limits), the software and upgrade support is more important. I think LG is more concerned with forcing you to buy a newer model than supporting existing devices. I think they don't agree with the notion that a happy customer will be a return customer. I won't be returning for any of their products.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I switched to Samsung from HTC for the reasons stated above (removable battery, SD card), and also because the build quality of my last HTC phone was very poor. Another factor: I may have considered the OneX, but my carrier got the S3 immediately and there's no sign of the OneX...
I hear your cry but it sounds like you what you need is am actual proper camera.
Sorry, I prefer to hide behind a degree of anonymity here on Slashdot.
I appreciate your work back then, and the work of other good folks. If only they were in charge...
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Yeah, and that "super hit phone" has exactly zero competition that runs the same OS, unlike Android, where you've got lots of options running the same OS and do come with removable batteries and expandable storage.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Don't forget that Android makes several billion dollars a year for Microsoft in the form of patent royalties.
...as long as you sign a contract for $$$$. And I must agree that the Iphone 4 is indeed low-end compared to most Android phones!
Given that the vast majority of Android phones being sold are still on Froyo or Gingerbread - it is unlikely the average consumer would agree with you.
I had a Froyo phone for a bit more than a year, and it didn't even compare favorably with my old first-generation iPod Touch.
#DeleteChrome
Those are sales not profits.
Oops, that was for 2011. Here's as of 1 October 2012, from Android.com. It may not be entirely representative since the metric is accesses made to the Google Play store. Even now, more than 70% of Android devices are on 1.x or 2.x.
#DeleteChrome
No, this Windows thing is true of Samsung as well. When I recently visited Bangalore, I saw a billboard which said 'thank you' for their popularity. The ad didn't mention Android; it did show Android phones like S3 and Note II (with blank screens) and below the humongous Samsung logo, logos for Windows Phone and bada OS. No mention of Android at all. It's obvious these vendors' hands are tied when it comes to which platform gets better advertising.
The 'current' home page design could also be largely a result of the fact that Windows Phone 8 is launching right now....
Go ahead, pick a date -- any date: http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://htc.com
Look in the WHAT'S NEW section (since the way back machine doesn't seem to capture the Flash part). It doesn't matter which year you pick, they always seem to be launching a Windows phone of some kind, whether it's six months in advance, a year in advance, or whatever. And they do mention their Android phone launches, but just without the "Android" word, they just call them 3G phones and 4G phones, and those headlines seem to be generally much more subdued -- and much more absent from their home page (although, I'm willing to bet they have that many more actual Android phone launches than Windows phone launches).
Why would I blame the carriers? My Galaxy Nexus comes with an easy ability to unlock, and I'm on Sprint. Sprint hasn't asked any OEMs to lock down anything that I'm aware. All of the newer Samsung phones on the Sprint network can easily be unlocked.
As far as I'm aware, t-mobile doesn't care if you are unlocked either. I've never looked at Verizon or AT&T as I've never been interested in either carrier.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
But the best camera is the one you're carrying with you
I Just take this as a sign to take a dslr with me everywhere.
First, the most recent date available is in July 2011. Second, I don't see the Windows Windows Everywhere that you see. What I mostly see, more than anything else is HTC Sense on every page. And if they don't specifically mention Android or Google all the time they are pitching their own hardware, maybe it's just that they don't want to pay George Lucas or Google more licensing fees than they have to, and I am alright with that. Of course they have more Android launches than Windows launches, the fragmentation of Android devices and the total saturation of the market with every tier of Android device is well known. Windows will/can actually pay to have the premium product placement.
Gathering information from users locations, surfing habits, emails, etc etc etc and monetzing it (chiefly via making this information available to advertisers).
>It'll take a lot of ads to pay back the $12 billion spent on Motorola
They're worth something like $250 billion, so $12 billion isn't very much, is it?
Oh, I forgot. I guess this is the new normal ...
His phone runs DOS, you insensitive clod
No
Most locked down???? Um, Sony has a far better bootloader unlocking program than HTC (none of that "unlocked but S-ON" bullshit you get from HTC), they are one of the largest contributors to AOSP, they have the ONLY non-Nexus phone in AOSP with the Xperia S, they open-sourced their sensor HAL with DASH, and actively cooperate with the CyanogenMod team to facilitate CM bringups on their devices. (As in, Alin Jerpelea has received quite a decent number of phones for free from them, and they provide answers to technical questions from him.)
The disadvantage, of course, is they don't have the clout to force through unlockable bootloaders against the carrier's wishes like Samsung does. Samsung is about the only manufacturer that has been able to get away with an unlocked/unlockable bootloader on a SIM-locked phone. (Carriers see a locked bootloader as an extra layer of defense. I think this is stupid since they have a FUCKING SIGNED CONTRACT enforcing the contract subsidy terms regardless of technical measures... But carriers suck big fat donkey balls.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yup. I think manufacturers fail to see that in today's day and age, "Average Joe User" doesn't trust the marketing bullshit - he goes to his techie friend.
If the techie friend doesn't like HTC because of HTC's bootloader locking policies, Average Joe won't buy HTC.
In some ways, when making a recommendation, knowing a device has that "way out" if the manufacturer abandons/screws up a device is critical to me feeling comfortable recommending a phone. I will never recommend a phone with a locked bootloader that is not fully unlockable to any family member or friend, even if they never do put custom firmware on it, I know that at least there will be an escape route for them if the manufacturer fucks up in the future.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Why do people seem to assume that "Droid" and "Android" are synonymous? "Droid" is exclusively a Verizon brand, and yes, that involves licensing to Lucas, soon to be Disney.
But "Android" has nothing to do with Lucas, and Android phones on other networks are not "Droids." It may be that Google requires licensing for the Android name, I'm not sure, but Lucas certainly doesn't.
Yeah, I know, you didn't say that all Androids are Droids, you just triggered a pet peeve of mine. :)
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
Peeves are the only pet worth their bother.
.
but carriers also suck big fat elephant balls.
.
We now return to our regularly scheduled /. rants and raves.
>I'm absolutely certain you meant 32 GB
Yes, you're right. I started this stuff in the 70's, saying megabyte still sounds cool when you're used to k so it just slips out now and then.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil