We’ve seen the recent slide in HTC’s profits and the company’s CFO, Winston Yung, believes he knows why sales numbers have not been meeting expectations.  Yung admitted in today’s earnings call that HTC “dropped the ball” when it comes to its lineup of LTE devices.  He continued to note that the LTE devices failed on [...]

The latest numbers from HTC show that revenue from the month of November dropped nearly 20% with new handset sales down 30% from the same month last year.  It’s shocking to see HTC’s revenue numbers fall, but it wasn’t completely unexpected since HTC did issue earnings revisions for the quarter which predicted that Q4 would [...]

HTC’s monthly sale figure for May have hit the press and we’re certainly happy to report that things are looking good.  A Newport coming from Reuters shows that HTC’s sales for the months of May hit T$40.62b (1.42 billion U.S. dollars), more than doubling last May second setting T$18.82b ($656million). There are no details regarding [...]

We all know that HTC has never been in the same categories as the other big players in the handset market.  Samsung, Nokia, LG, and all the other handset manufacturers churn through millions of phone per months, while HTC struggles to hit those same numbers in a quarter.  But with the ever-increasing adoption rate of the Android platform, HTC sales are expected to rise significantly in Q2 of 2010.  HTC is expecting revenues of $1.6 billion in Q2, based on sales of 4.5 million handsets.  Those numbers are significantly higher than the 3.3 million phones HTC sold in Q1.  HTC’s CFO, Cheng Hui-ming the upward trend to the “growing popularity of the Android platform in Europe and the US”.  It’s no secret that Android is HTC’s new OS of choice. 

The HTC Incredible launched today on Verizon, and Sprint and T-Mobile are expected to launch flagship HTC Android handsets within the next month or two.  We still do not know what HTC has planned for Windows Phone 7 later in the year, but we can be sure that the sales numbers from HTC will continue to trend upwards.

Source: Financial Times

HTC is off to a great start for 2010.  Chief Executive Peter Chou recently mentioned that HTC is trending better than expected for the year: “It looks like the growth in the U.S market is faster than others.”  He did not elaborate on which handsets are contributing to the market growth, but we can speculate that the DROID Eris, myTouch 3G Fender Edition, and the new T-Mobile HTC HD2 has a lot to do with it.  According to HTC’s annual report, they shipped between 5.5 and 6 million phones in the U.S. in 2009.  With Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G and Verizon’s HTC Incredible right around the corner, HTC should see significant growth and additional brand recognition. 

“They [Verizon and T-Mobile] started treating us as their first-tier suppliers last year,” Mr. Chou said, “It was difficult for us [to boost our sales] without their support. But their endorsements became a strong momentum” for growth.

HTC has also noted that their first-quarter net profit rose 3.1% over last year.  Analysts believe HTC’s drive to improve brand recognition may be paying off and causing consumers to actually take notice of the brand for the first time in the U.S. market.  Revenues at HTC rose 19% to NT$37.7 billion from NT$31.59 billion, much higher than the predicted NT$32 billion and NT$34 billion. 

Revenues at HTC are expected to increase even more over the next few quarters as HTC starts to reap more benefits from their “YOU” marketing campaign that has rolled out in Europe and America.  They also plan on seeing huge growth in the Chinese market and expect to sell four million to five million units by 2011, up from 1.6 million units sold in 2009. 

Source: The Wall Street Journal

The patent dispute between Apple and HTC seems to be heating up a bit.  Apple is now bringing their complain before the U.S. International Trade Commission since they plain that HTC’s infringements violate the Tariff Act of 1930: “importation into the United States and sale of certain personal data and mobile communications devices and related software that infringe patents asserted by the complainants.”

Though the patent dispute has barely begun, the U.S. International Trade Commission has the right to bar the importation of HTC products into the U.S. market based on the patent dispute.  Apple has requested that the commission “issue an exclusion order and a cease and desist order.”  At this moment, the commission has not made any rulings on the matter, but there are evidentiary hearings already scheduled.  Once the procession begins, the commission has 45 days to schedule a target completion date, no matter what the outcome. 

If Apple does win this claim against HTC with the U.S. International Trade Commission, sales of HTC products in the U.S. would come to a halt. We’re still unclear on why Apple is specifically targeting HTC and their products when all the other Android producing manufacturers could be lumped into the patent claim as well.  Clearly, HTC is seen as one of the biggest threats to Apple’s iPhone market share. 

Source: Total Telecom