Back in 2011, HTC started following BlackBerry and Nokia’s path which ultimately led to Nokia being bought by Microsoft, and BlackBerry is still around somehow. HTC has been seeing declining revenues for the past few years. They thought they building the best looking smartphone would be enough, clearly it wasn’t. For the past three years, HTC Has had some pretty mediocre cameras in their flagships, which have led users to go to their competitors like Samsung, LG, and Motorola. HTC’s market share in the US is now under 3%, while Samsung and Apple make up over 60% of the market.
Back in February, Calvin Huang who is an analyst for Sinopac Financial Holdings Co. suggested that investors take profit on the stock. Thanks to the poor reviews of the HTC One M9 that hadn’t even been announced officially yet. This past Friday, HTC cut its quarterly sales projection as much as 35% and announced a one-time writedown of assets. This alone is going to make turning a profit in 2015 almost impossible. Huang wrote on Monday, “The nightmare isn’t over.” Huang cut his price target to NT$53, which indicates that the stock could fall about 37% percent. “HTC will keep losing share in the smartphone market and will keep losing money in the coming quarters.”
Part of the reason for HTC’s change in forecast for the upcoming quarter is the decrease for high-end smartphones in China, and the trouble the company has had overseas. HTC launched the One M9+ over in China earlier this year, which was a more souped up HTC One M9. One that many of us here in the US had hoped to get over here. But in China, the high-end smartphone market isn’t priced the same as the rest of the world.
HTC has stated that we will see a new flagship in October. We’re not sure if that will be in the One or the Desire line, many are thinking a new Desire is coming our way. Which HTC has done well with their Desire smartphones, but they never really make it to the US. They are mostly available in Europe.