HTC is a company that has always made great looking smartphones. A company that has made “premium” phones, in terms of build quality. But in the past few years, they haven’t been doing all that well. In fact, in 2014, they broke even for the first time in a few years. Now in 2015, HTC has been posting double-digit declines in revenue each month. Now when a company broke even a year before, posting double-digit declines each month the following year, is not a good sign.
Typically, in earnings reports companies will give analysts and investors a bit of guidance of what is going on. Based on trends they are seeing, to set them up for the future. HTC has decided to stop giving guidance with their earnings reports. And instead is going to be leaving that up to the analysts, who will predict numbers they think HTC will post, anyways.
HTC reported a revenue of $657 million for the third quarter (that’s July 1st through September 30th). That’s down from around $1.3 billion the year before. That’s roughly a 50% decrease in revenue. Thus HTC is not posting any projections for the fourth quarter. Even with them having just launched three new smartphones in key markets. Including the Butterfly 3 in Asia, and the HTC One A9 in North America and Europe.
The decline that HTC is seeing this year isn’t all due to smartphones not selling well. At Mobile World Congress the company announced a few products that were outside of the smartphone realm. Including the HTC Grip which was their fitness tracker built in partnership with Under Armor. Which recently saw yet another delay and is slated to be available in 2016 now. The other product being the HTC Vive, which is built in partnership with Valve. The Vive has been doing demos for people all over the world this year, and is expected to be available for consumers to buy in 2016.
Back in 2011, HTC represented a big share of the market for smartphones and Android. With 1 in every 10 phones sold being an HTC-made smartphone. Dating back earlier than that, HTC was the launch partner for Android and the Nexus. Making the HTC G1 (or HTC Dream outside the US) and then the Nexus One with Google. HTC is capable of a comeback, and it’s about time they started it. But the smartphone arena is a tough one. The only companies making money are those that do more than just mobile, like LG and Samsung. Perhaps that’s where HTC needs to turn, and they already have with the HTC Grip, Vive and RE Camera.