HTC, one of the most brilliant device manufacturers, or so I see them at least, has been for the last couple of quarters on an ever spiraling descent which has ultimately led to them getting quite less than they were expecting. Of course, there may have been other factors implicated in this whole ordeal, but we will try to figure those out later.
Quite a few predictions had been made about the profits and revenues of HTC during 2012. When the Taiwanese manufacturer disagreed and said they would be much lower, I don’t think anyone actually believed it. I bet they would have liked to be wrong in that situation, but the fact remains that reality is harsh. For once, the predictions made by the manufacturer ended up being true and the ones made by the analysts ended up being just a little off the field.
The difference wasn’t a whole lot, and frankly it’s pretty similar to that funny little case that occurs once in a while in those old Price guessing shows. I think there was once a show called The Price is Right in which contestants had to guess the price of objects and whoever was the most close ended up winning the object. When in doubt, contestants often put close prices such as: Player 1 chose 50 dollars and Player 2 chose 51 dollars. That was sort of the case here. The analysts predicted a revenue of NT$60.5 billion and HTC made one of NT$60 billion. Therefore, you can see how this turned up quite an interesting little story.
However, all predictions left aside, the true income that HTC made in the forth quarter of 2012 was NT$600 million ( or around 21 million dollars, in currency you might understand ) where as the NET income before all of the tax deductions was NT$1 billion ( or around 35 million dollars ).
Unfortunately for them, the HTC One X+ and their Droid DNA didn’t exactly cut it when it came to making it big. Both the phones put together didn’t have half the impact that the S III had when it hit the market and didn’t even get close to the impact the iPhone 5 had. That just goes to show you that a few millions of dollars put into marketing can go a long way.
The CEO of HTC himself went on to say that their current predicament was caused by poor marketing choices. Truth be told, when considering buying a new Android phone, especially in 2012, few were the individuals who even KNEW what the One X was. They weren’t so wide-spread as Apple and Samsung and that may have just been their downfall.
My personal opinion is that Apple also was a pretty big cause in all of this. After all, HTC has never quite been the same after their trial in which they were forced by Apple. Some recover better than others, but at least there is still hope for the future.
While the global smartphone percentage did drop for HTC ( from the 10.3% they had the year before to the current 4.6% – according to Bloomberg ), the company is expected to take a turn for the better in Q1 of 2013 as the release of the HTC Butterfly sound promising to quite a few individuals and the reduced production cost of the Droid DNA should prove so enticing that they are bound to increase the NET profits of HTC. Only time will tell, however.
