Things have not been very good for Taiwanese phone maker HTC lately. Once one of the largest Android (and smartphone) manufacturers in the world, they have seen their global market share drop from being one out of every 10 smartphones sold back in 2011, to a mere 2% presence today. Additionally, at that time, their shares were worth 15 times what they are today, a significant drop, let’s say. Despite creating some great handsets starting with the One M7 and followed by the One M8, the company failed to catch the eyes of the consumer and enraged most fans with the release of the One M9 earlier this year, a phone that looked almost exactly as its predecessor, not giving users any good reason to upgrade. As a result, sales dropped and revenue fell more than 30% in the quarter following the announcement of the M9. More recently, the company unveiled a set of new smartphones in the hopes of recovering from its spiral downfall according to market analysts from Taiwan, the efforts may finally bring some positive results, as revenues are expected to grow by 20 to 30% in Q4 2015 when compared to Q3 2015, a significant increase that could mean a breath of hope for HTC.
As revealed by Taiwanese technology website DigiTimes, revenues should reach between 25 and 28 billion Taiwanese dollars, around $800 million. In Q3 2015, the company posted a revenue of $659 million and an operating loss of $138 million. For this quarter, despite the revenue set to grow, HTC is likely to post a loss similar to last quarter. During 2015, the company had revenues of almost $3 billion while posting losses of $370 million. The best quarter for HTC this year was Q1 2015 when the company presented an $1.3 billion revenue with a shy profit of $11 million. Things started to get worse again after revenues fell to $1.07 billion against the estimated $1.5 billion with the sales of the One M9.
For the months to come, HTC has some cards in its sleeves, as they have just released the Butterfly 3, HTC One A9 and the HTC Desire 729, with the former being an interesting flagship phone with a 5.2-inch QHD screen, a big selfie camera and a powerful hardware, and the latter being two mid-range devices aimed at mass markets. Additionally, the arrival of the company’s first virtual reality (VR) headset, the HTC Vive may help things a little bit with holiday sales and so on, as the company will target the device in the US and Europe initially. We should see more details soon, as HTC is expected to unveil their financial results at an investors conference today.