HTC has been facing losing quarters one after another for a long time now. The only quarters the company actually managed to turn profit were the ones their flagship devices were released and available. This Taiwanese giant has decided to cut costs and recently and restructure in order to avoid further significant loses. It seems like this strategy is already paying off for HTC considering their Q3 results are better than expected, reports Reuters.
HTC officially said that the company earned T$640 million ($21 million) in unaudited net in Q3 (July – September) which is way above the T$216.23 million estimate of 13 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. During the same period last year, HTC has turned in a loss of T$3 billion, so this a great result for HTC no matter which way you look at it. The sales are still sluggish, but it seems the cut costs strategy and restructuring (even though that’s still not over) has helped this Taiwan-based giant get back to the right path. It is worth nothing though that HTC’s sales in September fell 7.9% to T$16.7 billion, which means year-to-date revenue through September was down 13% to T$140 billion. Shares of HTC closed up 2.3% before the earnings release.
Considering that IDC predicts worldwide smartphone shipments will expand by 24% this year, there might still be more than enough space for HTC to grab consumers and get their sales on the right path. This profit certainly came in good for HTC, but it won’t do much good if the company doesn’t manage to sell more phones in the coming quarters. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll say it again, I do believe HTC makes great devices and they do deserve to sell more of them, consumers would be pleased using devices made by this Taiwanese company. Unfortunately, there are many factors involved in sales today, starting with marketing which is not HTC’s strong suite, as we’ve witnessed in the past. Hopefully, HTC will be able to use this profit as encouragement and raise the bar for themselves and other manufacturers as well.